Manufacturing tea strainers

Once again, we visit a small factory on the sub-continent, this time one in Pakistan. As I've said before, I like these videos because, while Western industrial videos annoy you with a soundtrack of elevator music and chipper marketing blather, these just show the factories and their processes with no comments. 

These strainers are used when using loose tea to make the drink. I couldn't find the M Naseem brand on-line, so I have no idea what they cost, but I'm guessing not much. I did find the site Magic Hour that sells some rather expensive tea strainers. I guess they're needed if you are having a fancy tea party.

 

Making shovels

We visit a small factory in SW Asia (I think it is in Pakistan, but it might be in India) where they are making shovels. As is always with these types of videos, the work is dirty, laborious and slightly dangerous looking.

 

Stratfor and Mahira Khan

This Stratfor article examines the recent uptick of violence by the Pakistani terrorist group Tehrik-i-Taliban in the Punjab, which is outside of the area they have been operating in for the last several years.

After reviewing the recent history of the conflict between the Pakistani central government and Tehrik-i-Taliban, West and Bokhari turn towards the timing of the terrosit group's latest attacks.

While one might think the attacks were tied to the reopening of the northern supply line to NATO troops in Afghanistan, the actual cause might be the increased austerity measures which Pakistan is having to impose to meet IMF loan conditions.

It is a very interesting article. The beginning of it is excerpted below, with a link to the entire article at the end of the excerpt.

I found it thought provoking, and rather common-sensical,  that economic issues rather than terrorist dogma could be driving so much of the chaos in Pakistan. One of the pit-falls of obsessing about politics and world affairs is that it is easy to forget that those concerns are only a slice of life and that the business of living, where ever it is taking place, is rather more mundane, sane and familiar than what the headlines paint.

With those thoughts in mind, when I read this article about Mahira Khan, she became the easy choice for this article's Hot Stratfor Babe.

Ms Khan was born in Karachi, but at the age of 16 she decided she wanted to live abroad so she moved to Los Angeles where she lived for a few years and attended high school, classes at a community college and worked a number of jobs. While home on a visit, she was approached and signed as a VJ on Pakistan's MTV. From there she moved to doing shows on a youth channel and eventually landed a starring role in an extremely popular television serial.

Yes, in Pakistan there are the taliban and other bearded, religious fanatics, but it is well to remember that there is also music videos on MTV, headstrong and fashionable young women and IMF bankers who's loans you need. As I pointed out in an earlier post of mine, Death from above, the war of ideas cuts both ways and it very well may be the TV remote rather than the knife that carries the day.


Violence Returns to Pakistan's Major Cities
By Ben West and Kamran Bokhari, July 19, 2012

At dawn July 12, militants raided a prison guard residence in Lahore, Pakistan, leaving nine staff members dead and three more wounded. The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan quickly claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the guards had mistreated prisoners who were members of the Pakistani militant group. The raid came just three days after militants ambushed an army camp in the district of Gujrat, killing seven soldiers and one police officer who were searching for a missing helicopter pilot. The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan also claimed that attack.

Over the last two years, Pakistan has had something of a respite from dramatic attacks such as those that plagued the country from 2007 to 2010. During those years, a series of high-profile and highly disruptive attacks against police, army and intelligence targets challenged the government's ability to control the country. The attacks occurred in Pakistan's most populous province, Punjab, in cities such as Lahore and in the capital, Islamabad.

[Map of area at: Violence Returns to Pakistan's Major Cities]

While suicide bombings and attacks in Pakistan's troubled northwest (along the border with Afghanistan) have continued apace since 2010, major attacks in Pakistan's Punjab-Sindh core have essentially ceased. The sole instance of dramatic violence involving government targets outside of the northwest since 2010 was an attack on a naval station near Karachi following the death of Osama bin Laden.

Despite the break from violence in Pakistan's major cities, many of the same conditions present during the wave of attacks from 2007 to 2010 remain. Another escalation in violence is very possible, especially in Pakistan's volatile climate and with elections coming up.

Timing of the Attacks

The two attacks (along with numerous other attacks and an attempted assassination) came the week after Pakistan formally reopened NATO supply routes through the country to Afghanistan. The supply routes had been closed for more than seven months after a deadly cross-border attack by U.S. forces in November that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. The day the routes reopened, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan told journalists it would attack trucks carrying NATO supplies in protest.

But rather than an impetus for attacks, the reopening of the supply line is more likely a political opportunity for the Pakistani Taliban militants to promote anti-American sentiment in Pakistan. The NATO supply line is one of the most visible products of the U.S.-Pakistani relationship. The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and some political opposition groups have criticized the Pakistani government for helping Washington while the U.S. military conducted strikes killing mostly Pakistanis along the border with Afghanistan. By opposing the NATO supply line, the Pakistani Taliban militants are able to generate popular support across Pakistan.

The seven-month closure of the supply line gave NATO and the United States a chance to prove that they can use the Northern Distribution Network to bypass Pakistan. During the shutdown, there was no evidence in Afghanistan of an attempt to exploit the closed route, so it is hard to argue that the Afghan Taliban (or their Pakistani peers) gained any material advantages from the shutdown. If anything, the Pakistani Taliban militants can benefit from the supply route's opening; the trucks are easy targets for looters and can provide revenue and supplies for militants in Pakistan's northwest, and the militants can exact extortion payments from transportation companies.

The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan's real motivation for resuming attacks in Punjab after a two-year hiatus is more complicated than the reopening of the NATO supply line. It involves a remote geographic region of Pakistan that has been dragged into the 10-year-old Afghanistan War, a struggling Pakistani economy, distrust of Pakistan's current government and upcoming elections that are seen as an opportunity to address grievances against Islamabad. Most of these grievances are the same complaints that drove the violence from 2007 to 2010, when militant activities in Pakistan peaked. Since 2009, however, military forces have moved into many of the militant havens in Pakistan's northwest, denying the Pakistani Taliban forces sanctuary. But this is not a permanent solution to Pakistan's internal rifts.

The Broader Context

The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan is based in the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in the Pakistani northwest. During the Soviet-Afghan war in the 1980s, Pakistan and the United States used Islam as the ideological motivation to rally militias in the border region to oppose the Soviet occupation. The United States turned its attention elsewhere after the Soviets withdrew, leaving Pakistan to manage a complex network of militants. Islamabad attempted to use these militants as proxies during the 1990s to exercise influence in Afghanistan and India.

But after 2001, the United States pressured Pakistan to restrain its militant proxies in Afghanistan in order to support the U.S. war against Islamist militancy. After a few years of wavering, former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf did crack down on these groups' leaders in Pakistan, beginning with the Red Mosque siege in 2007. It soon became apparent that the militant groups were more autonomous than believed. By 2009, radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah claimed the district of Swat as an Islamic emirate, threatening Pakistan's territorial integrity within roughly 320 kilometers (200 miles) of the capital.

The Pakistani Taliban militants made it clear that their goal was to take over the Pakistani state, beginning in the mountains surrounding the Indus River Valley. This led the government to deploy forces to Swat in April 2010. These forces expanded their offensive to South Waziristan later that year and by the end of 2010, they had gone into every single district of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas save North Waziristan. Since the army's operations in South Waziristan, one of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan's strongest sanctuaries, militant attacks in Punjab have decreased.

Read more: Violence Returns to Pakistan's Major Cities | Stratfor

Stratfor and Ali MacGraw

This Stratfor article starts with Scott Stewart discussing a June 7th incident in which 4 U.S. diplomats were briefly detained by Pakistani forces.

From there Stewart examines the increasing difficulty U.S. diplomats and other personnel are having operating in Pakistan in light of the deteriorating relationship between the two countries.

It is a shame our political will dissolved so soon after 9/11. I think Pakistan is a Gordian knot that's going to have to be cut sooner or later. The longer we wait, the uglier it is going to be.

The beginning of the article is excerpted below. At the end of the excerpt is a link to the full article.

For the article's Hot Stratfor Babe, motorcades reminded me of convoys, and that naturally brought the movie Convoy to mind. Ali MacGraw is the female lead of the film, and so she gets the honor of representing the article.

Convoy is about heroic truckers and is based on a Country Western song from the tail end of the 1980s CB radio craze. If you've never seen the movie the proceeding sentence should be enough to clue you into its immense goofiness. To add another level to the strangeness, this drek was directed by Sam Peckinpah. Ka-boing!

As for Ms MacGraw, she was quite popular for a while. I always took her to be Hollywood's cleaned-up  version of a hippie girl. Her big break was the movie Love Story which, come to think of it, is probably a more ludicrous movie than Convoy. She bounced around film for a bit, and ended her acting career doing television. She's retired and living in New Mexico these days.


Tensions and Operational Challenges in Pakistan
By Scott Stewart, June 7, 2012

On June 4, four U.S. diplomats assigned to the Consulate General of the United States in Peshawar, Pakistan, were stopped at a military checkpoint and temporarily detained after refusing to allow their two vehicles to be searched. The diplomats -- including a vice consul -- were traveling in a two-vehicle motorcade and were accompanied by three Pakistani Foreign Service National (FSN) security officers.

According to media reports, the Pakistani military has charged that the diplomats had traveled to Malakand without first obtaining permission from the Pakistani government. Malakand is a city located about 120 kilometers (75 miles) northeast of Peshawar in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, formerly known as the Northwest Frontier Province. Because of the problems Pakistan has had with foreign jihadists in its border badlands, all foreigners are required to obtain something called a No Objection Certificate from Pakistan's Interior Ministry before visiting areas in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and the adjacent Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Furthermore, the Pakistani press noted that the Pakistani military also objected to the Americans and their Pakistani FSNs' being armed and operating vehicles with fake license plates to disguise the diplomatic vehicles.

At its core, though, this incident is not about these small infractions. Indeed, Peshawar is the capital of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province and diplomats stationed there already have received host country permission to be in the province. Additionally, U.S. diplomats assigned to Peshawar rarely venture outside of their secure compounds without a protective detail because of the extreme security threat in the city. Rather, this incident is a product of the strain in U.S.-Pakistani relations.

Motorcade Operations

The threat against U.S. diplomats in Peshawar is quite acute. In August 2008, American Consul General in Peshawar Lynne Tracy survived a small-arms attack against her motorcade. In November 2008, the director of the U.S. Agency for International Development in Peshawar, Stephen Vance, was assassinated in an attack on his vehicle. In June 2009, Peshawar's Pearl Continental Hotel, which housed many foreign diplomats and U.N. personnel, was attacked with a massive vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED), and in April 2010 the American Consulate building was the target of an elaborate VBIED plot. In May 2011, a U.S. diplomatic motorcade was attacked in Peshawar using a remotely detonated VBIED that was activated as the motorcade drove past. Jihadists also have attacked numerous Pakistani targets inside the city, including military, police and other government officials.

Given the threat in Peshawar, it makes sense that the vice consul would travel in an armed motorcade to attend a meeting -- especially in Malakand, which is even more remote than Peshawar and even more dangerous for a U.S. government employee. The use of fake vehicle tags is also logical. There are places where it is beneficial to announce one's diplomatic status, but in Peshawar, diplomatic vehicles and premises are targeted specifically for attacks. It is also an environment in which the militants possess the weaponry to engage a fully armored vehicle, so it is much better to attempt to be low key than to maintain a high-profile protective detail. American and other diplomats frequently do this in Pakistan, so it was somewhat disingenuous of the Pakistani military to raise it as a point of contention in this case.

From the configuration of the motorcade as shown on Pakistani television, it appears that it was intended to safeguard the vice consul, who was presumably riding in the rear seat of the first vehicle with a U.S. driver and the agent in charge of his protective detail riding in the vehicle's front passenger seat. The security follow-car appears to have been staffed by a U.S. shift leader riding in the front passenger seat and a Pakistani FSN driver and two FSN security officers in the rear of the vehicle.

It is not clear if the three U.S. security officers are full-time government employees or contractors. They reportedly were carrying U.S. diplomatic passports at the time of the incident, but not everyone who holds a diplomatic passport is afforded full diplomatic immunity. Still, it is likely they were at the very least members of the administrative and technical staff and that they would be afforded functional diplomatic immunity for activities related to their official duties.

This case is quite unlike the January 2011 Raymond Davis case, in which a contract security officer assigned to the U.S. Consulate General in Lahore shot and killed two men who he claims attempted to rob him. In the June 4 incident, the security officers were with the diplomat they were protecting and clearly were performing their assigned duties. This means they would be immune from prosecution for any violations the Pakistanis can cite in this incident. However, the FSN security officers could find themselves in a much worse position if the Pakistani government decides to pursue charges against them.

U.S.-Pakistani Tensions

While the June 4 incident is unlike the Davis case, it certainly is related to the growing tension between the United States and Pakistan exacerbated by the Davis shootings. The countries' relationship deteriorated further after the U.S. raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan. Relations between the two countries reached an all-time low in November 2011 after U.S. airstrikes against a Pakistani military post along the country's northwestern border with Afghanistan resulted in the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers. In response, the Pakistani government shut down NATO's supply route into Afghanistan, asked U.S. forces to vacate an air base used to fly unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and suspended military and intelligence cooperation.

Read more: Tensions and Operational Challenges in Pakistan | Stratfor

Stratfor and Lucy Lawless

In this Stratfor article Nat Williams examines the cross boarder firefight between U.S. and Pakistani forces. Although details of the fight are contested, Williams expands upon what facts he can infer from the incident.

The Afghan-Pakistani is ill-defines and regardless, U.S. troops will cross it in hot pursuit of Taliban units. He believes that it is like that the American ground troops involved were U.S. special forces engaged in just such a pursuit. When they came upon the Pakistani fire base they would be uncertain who was manning it.

Which ever side fired first, the American troops called in air support and the base was then attacked with Apache helicopters and an AC-130 gunship. The result of this fight was that the already strained U.S. Pakistani relationship was strained even further, with both sides trying to control the narrative of the fight to their own political and strategic advantage.

Because the fight did occur in a tribal area, I looked to a female tribal warrior for the article's Host Stratfor Babe. Naturally this led directly to Lucy Lawless who played Xena the Warrior Princess.

Ms Lawless has had a very active career, but she is probably best known for her role as Xena in the popular TV series. I don't know much about the show, having only caught bits and pieces of it. However, I do know that among the shows fans there was more than a passing suspicion that Xena and her sidekick Gabrielle were more than just good friends, if you know what I mean, and I think that you do.

For the bonus article which is embedded after the article I had intended to find a clip of Xena fighting, but most of the clips ended up being Xena/Gabrielle shipper clips. Shippers are TV fans who root for a relationship between two TV characters, and they tend to make schmaltzy fan videos with crappy pop music over romantic scenes of the characters they're shipping. 

Finally, after watching about a dozen of these damn things I just gave up and grabbed one of them for the bonus video. So, turn the sound down and watch the two of them goo-goo eying each other, blubbering a lot, smooching each other and so forth.       
 

A Deadly U.S. Attack on Pakistani Soil
By Nate Hughes, December 1,2011

In the early hours of Nov. 26 on the Afghan-Pakistani border, what was almost certainly a flight of U.S. Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopters and an AC-130 gunship killed some two dozen Pakistani servicemen at two border outposts inside Pakistan. Details remain scarce, conflicting and disputed, but the incident was known to have taken place near the border of the Afghan provinces of Kunar and Nangarhar and the Mohmand agency of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The death toll inflicted by the United States against Pakistani servicemen is unprecedented, and while U.S. commanders and NATO leaders have expressed regret over the incident, the reaction from Pakistan has been severe.

Claims and Interests

The initial Pakistani narrative of the incident describes an unprovoked and aggressive attack on well-established outposts more than a mile inside Pakistani territory — outposts known to the Americans and ones that representatives of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had visited in the past. The attack supposedly lasted for some two hours despite distressed communications from the outpost to the Pakistani military’s general headquarters in Rawalpindi.

(click here to enlarge image)

The United States was quick to acknowledge that Pakistani troops were probably killed by attack aircraft providing close air support to a joint U.S.-Afghan patrol near the Kunar border, and while U.S. Marine Gen. James Mattis, the head of U.S. Central Command, promised a high-level investigation, the United States and NATO seemed to be more interested in smoothing relations with Islamabad than endorsing or correcting initial reports about the specifics of the attack.

What has ensued has been a classic media storm of accusations, counteraccusations, theories and specifics provided by unnamed sources that all serve to obscure the truth as much as they clarify it. Meanwhile, no matter what actually happened, aggressive spin campaigns have been launched to shape perceptions of the incident for myriad interests. Given the longstanding tensions between Washington and Islamabad as well as a record of cross-border incidents, stakeholders will believe exactly what they want to believe about the Nov. 26 incident, and even an official investigation will have little bearing on their entrenched views.

The Framework

While statements and accusations have often referenced NATO and the ISAF, it is U.S. forces that operate in this part of the country, and this close to the border the unit involved was likely operating under the aegis of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan (the U.S. command in Afghanistan) rather than under the multinational ISAF. Indeed, many American allies have also expressed frustration over the incident, convinced that it undermines ISAF operations in Afghanistan. [continues after the jump]

Stratfor and Véra Clouzot

In this article Friedman examines the Afghanistan logistics situation in the aftermath of the incident at the Pakistani outpost. Pakistan closed the ground routes into Afghanistan and Russia is threatening to shut down the alternate route through their territory. 

Pakistan believes that the U.S. is stalemated in Afghanistan and, even though the U.S. could prosecute the war at current levels for some time, that there is no path open for an eventual victory.

For that reason Pakistan is using its response to the border fire fight as an excuse to distance itself from the U.S. and to ingratiate itself with the Taliban, who would almost certainly gain influence in any future post-NATO Afghani government.

Meanwhile Russia is using the fact that, in the advent of a prolonged closing of the supply route Pakistan, the Northern Distribution Network (NDN), which passes through Russian terrotory could be interrupted by them.

The Russian threats are part of the chessgame going on in Central Europe, where the U.S. is deploying missle batteries, interceptors and troops to guard their assets. Russia sees these moves as the return to the U.S. policy of containment with the belt tightened even closer to the Russian homeland than it was during the Cold War.

As for the article's Hot Stratfor Babe, since the article was about trucking in supplies, the movie The Wages of Fear which involved truckers moving a dangerous cargo of nitroglycerine naturally sprang to mind. For that reason I selected Véra Clouzot, the movie's female lead, for the article's  Hot Strafor Babe honor.

It you've ner seen The Wages of Fear, it is a good movie. It revolves around a group of seedy expats who are all broke and stranded in a remote South American village. Ms Clouzot plays a vixen who works in the local cantina. Eventually the chance to make enough money to escape the town appears in the form of the local industry -- a U.S. oil firm which they would ordinarily be to useless to get hired by -- has a well fire and needs somebody to drive 2 truckloads of nitroglycerine to the well site along some very dangerous roads.

Véra Clouzot  had a very brief film career, starring in only three films, all directed by her husband Henri-Georges Clouzot. She also wrote one screenplay for him. however, brief as her career was, it was well received, with the film Diabolique being considered a classic. 

As a bonus, after the article I've included a clip from The Wages of Fear where Véra is playing a tart who is washing the floor of the cantina she works in as she flirts with one of the layabout expats as well as a second longer clip in the cantina that gives a good feel for the film.


Pakistan, Russia and the Threat to the Afghan War
By George Friedman, November 30,2011

Days after the Pakistanis closed their borders to the passage of fuel and supplies for the NATO-led war effort in Afghanistan, for very different reasons the Russians threatened to close the alternative Russia-controlled Northern Distribution Network (NDN). The dual threats are significant even if they don’t materialize. If both routes are cut, supplying Western forces operating in Afghanistan becomes impossible. Simply raising the possibility of cutting supply lines forces NATO and the United States to recalculate their position in Afghanistan.

The possibility of insufficient lines of supply puts NATO’s current course in Afghanistan in even more jeopardy. It also could make Western troops more vulnerable by possibly requiring significant alterations to operations in a supply-constrained scenario. While the supply lines in Pakistan most likely will reopen eventually and the NDN likely will remain open, the gap between likely and certain is vast.

The Pakistani Outpost Attack

The Pakistani decision to close the border crossings at Torkham near the Khyber Pass and Chaman followed a U.S. attack on a Pakistani position inside Pakistan’s tribal areas near the Afghan border that killed some two-dozen Pakistani soldiers. The Pakistanis have been increasingly opposed to U.S. operations inside Pakistani territory. This most recent incident took an unprecedented toll, and triggered an extreme response. The precise circumstances of the attack are unclear, with details few, contradictory and disputed. The Pakistanis have insisted it was an unprovoked attack and a violation of their sovereign territory. In response, Islamabad closed the border to NATO; ordered the United States out of Shamsi air base in Balochistan, used by the CIA; and is reviewing military and intelligence cooperation with the United States and NATO.

The proximate reason for the reaction is obvious; the ultimate reason for the suspension also is relatively simple. The Pakistani government believes NATO, and the United States in particular, will fail to bring the war in Afghanistan to a successful conclusion. It follows that the United States and other NATO countries at some point will withdraw.

Some in Afghanistan have claimed that the United States has been defeated, but that is not the case. The United States may have failed to win the war, but it has not been defeated in the sense of being compelled to leave by superior force. It could remain there indefinitely, particular as the American public is not overly hostile to the war and is not generating substantial pressure to end operations. Nevertheless, if the war cannot be brought to some sort of conclusion, at some point Washington’s calculations or public pressure, or both, will shift and the United States and its allies will leave Afghanistan.

Given that eventual outcome, Pakistan must prepare to deal with the consequences. It has no qualms about the Taliban running Afghanistan and it certainly does not intend to continue to prosecute the United States’ war against the Taliban once its forces depart. To do so would intensify Taliban attacks on the Pakistani state, and could trigger an even more intense civil war in Pakistan. The Pakistanis have no interest in such an outcome even were the United States to remain in Afghanistan forever. Instead, given that a U.S. victory is implausible and its withdrawal inevitable and that Pakistan’s western border is with Afghanistan, Islamabad will have to live with — and possibly manage — the consequences of the re-emergence of a Taliban-dominated government.

Under these circumstances, it makes little sense for Pakistan to collaborate excessively with the United States, as this increases Pakistan’s domestic dangers and imperils its relationship with the Taliban. Pakistan was prepared to cooperate with the United States and NATO while the United States was in an aggressive and unpredictable phase. The Pakistanis could not risk more aggressive U.S. attacks on Pakistani territory at that point, and feared a U.S.-Indian entente. But the United States, while not leaving Afghanistan, has lost its appetite for a wider war and lacks the resources for one. It is therefore in Pakistan’s interest to reduce its collaboration with the United States in preparation for what it sees as the inevitable outcome. This will strengthen Pakistan’s relations with the Afghan Taliban and minimize the threat of internal Pakistani conflict.

Despite apologies by U.S. and NATO commanders, the Nov. 26 incident provided the Pakistanis the opportunity — and in their mind the necessity — of an exceptional response. The suspension of the supply line without any commitment to reopening it and the closure of the U.S. air base from which unmanned aerial vehicle operations were carried out (though Pakistani airspace reportedly remains open to operations) was useful to Pakistan. It allowed Islamabad to reposition itself as hostile to the United States because of American actions. It also allowed Islamabad to appear less pro-American, a powerful domestic political issue.

Pakistan has closed supply lines as a punitive measure before. Torkham was closed for 10 straight days in October 2010 in response to a U.S. airstrike that killed several Pakistani soldiers, and trucks at the southern Chaman crossing were “administratively delayed,” according to the Pakistanis. This time, however, Pakistan is signaling that matters are more serious. Uncertainty over these supply lines is what drove the United States to expend considerable political capital to arrange the alternative NDN.

(click here to enlarge image)

The NDN Alternative and BMD

This alternative depends on Russia. It transits Russian territory and airspace and much of the former Soviet sphere, stretching as far as the Baltic Sea — at great additional expense compared to the Pakistani supply route. This alternative is viable, as it would allow sufficient supplies to flow to support NATO operations. Indeed, over recent months it has become the primary line of supply, and reliance upon it is set to expand. At present, 48 percent of NATO supplies still go through Pakistan; 52 percent of NATO supplies come through NDN (non-lethal); 60 percent of all fuel comes through the NDN; and by the end of the year, the objective is for 75 percent of all non-lethal supplies to transit the NDN.

Separating the United States yields a different breakdown: Only 30 percent of U.S. supplies traverse Pakistan; 30 percent of U.S. supplies come in by air (some of it linked to the Karakoram-Torkham route, probably including the bulk of lethal weapons); and 40 percent of U.S. supplies come in from the NDN land route. [continued after the jump]

Stratfor and Zara Sheikh

This article discusses the history and current status of the Pakistani-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Although formerly abolished in 2001, remnants of the organization continue to operate and maintain a loose affiliation with other terror networks such as al Qaeda.

Its principal theater of operations is in South Asia -- Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kashmir and India. LeT was the group behind the Mumbai massacre, their most spectacular attack to date.

They've also tried to branch out and operate in the West, but have had limited success. Stewart and Noonan suggest that this is because elements of the Pakistani government support LeT activities in their region of the world, and it is that logistical and intelligence support which makes the group more effective. Without such support the group is likely to continue to struggle in launching successful attacks in the West.

Because the article focused on Pakistan I narrowed my search for its Hot Stratfor Babe to Pakistani models and actresses. After an exhaustive and scientifically conducted search I selected Zara Sheikh for the honor.

Ms Sheikh started her career as a teenage model doing ads and fashion spreads in magazines. Her career really took off when she signed on as the JaZZ Girl, which was the spokes-model for a cellular phone company. This expanded her career into TV ads as well as her work in the print media.

It also led her to be cast in a Lollywood film (from its base in Lahore, Pakistan's answer to Bollywood). She apparently is a very talented actress, because that first role landed her to win Pakistan's equivalence of an Oscar for Best Actress. Prior to be selected as a Hot Stratfor babe, the probably was her highest honor.

She has also branched into singing having recently released her first album after a couple of music videos and singing parts in films.

I couldn't find a decent quality video of one of her songs, so as the after-article bonus I've included a video which features a number of scans from her magazine spreads, every transition effect available to whoever put it together, and some very odd-ball zooms that start at her torso and pull back. Not sure what that was all about -- I guess the video's creator had a waist fetish or something.


THE EVOLUTION OF A PAKISTANI MILITANT NETWORK
By Sean Noonan and Scott Stewart, September 15, 2011

For many years now, STRATFOR has been carefully following the evolution of "Lashkar-e-Taiba" (LeT), the name of a Pakistan-based jihadist group that was formed in 1990 and existed until about 2001, when it was officially abolished. In subsequent years, however, several major attacks were attributed to LeT, including the November 2008 coordinated assault in Mumbai, India. Two years before that attack we wrote that the group, or at least its remnant networks, were nebulous but still dangerous. This nebulous nature was highlighted in November 2008 when the "Deccan Mujahideen," a previously unknown group, claimed responsibility for the Mumbai attacks.

While the most famous leaders of the LeT networks, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed and Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, are under house arrest and in jail awaiting trial, respectively, LeT still poses a significant threat. It's a threat that comes not so much from LeT as a single jihadist force but LeT as a concept, a banner under which various groups and individuals can gather, coordinate and successfully conduct attacks.

Such is the ongoing evolution of the jihadist movement. And as this movement becomes more diffuse, it is important to look at brand-name jihadist groups like LeT, al Qaeda, the Haqqani network and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan as loosely affiliated networks more than monolithic entities. With a debate under way between and within these groups over who to target and with major disruptions of their operations by various military and security forces, the need for these groups to work together in order to carry out sensational attacks has become clear. The result is a new, ad hoc template for jihadist operations that is  not easily defined and even harder for government leaders to explain to their constituents and reporters to explain to their readers.

Thus, brand names like Lashkar-e-Taiba (which means Army of the Pure) will continue to be used in public discourse while the planning and execution of high-profile attacks grows ever more complex. While the threat posed by these networks to the West and to India may not be strategic, the possibility of disparate though well-trained militants working together and even with organized-crime elements does suggest a continuing tactical threat that is worth examining in more detail.

The Network Formerly Known as Lashkar-e-Taiba

The history of the group of militants and preachers who created LeT and their connections with other groups helps us understand how militant groups develop and work together. Markaz al-Dawa wal-Irshad (MDI) and its militant wing, LeT, was founded with the help of transnational militants based in Afghanistan and aided by the Pakistani government. This allowed it to become a financially-independent social-service organization that was able to divert a significant portion of its funding to its militant wing.

The first stirrings of militancy within this network began in 1982, when Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi traveled from Punjab, Pakistan, to Paktia, Afghanistan, to fight with Deobandi militant groups. Lakhvi, who is considered to have been the military commander of what was known as LeT and is awaiting trial for his alleged role in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, adheres to an extreme version of the Ahl-e-Hadith (AeH) interpretation of Islam, which is the South Asian version of the Salafist-Wahhabist trend in the Arab world. In the simplest of terms, AeH is more conservative and traditional than the doctrines of most militant groups operating along the Durand Line. Militants there tend to follow an extreme brand of the Deobandi branch of South Asian Sunni Islam, similar to the extreme ideology of al Qaeda's Salafist jihadists.

Lakhvi created his own AeH-inspired militant group in 1984, and a year later two academics, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed and Zafar Iqbal, created Jamaat ul-Dawa, an Islamist AeH social organization. Before these groups were formed there was already a major AeH political organization called Jamaat AeH, led by the most well-known Pakistani AeH scholar, the late Allama Ehsan Elahi Zaheer, who was assassinated in Lahore in 1987. His death allowed Saeed and Lakhvi's movement to take off. It is important to note that AeH adherents comprise a very small percentage of Pakistanis and that those following the movement launched by Saeed and Lakhvi represent only a portion of those who ascribe to AeH's ideology.

In 1986, Saeed and Lakhvi joined forces, creating Markaz al-Dawa wal-Irshad (MDI) in Muridke, near Lahore, Pakistan. MDI had 17 founders, including Saeed and Lakhvi as well as transnational militants originally from places like Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian territories. While building facilities in Muridke for social services, MDI also established its first militant training camp in Paktia, then another in Kunar, Afghanistan, in 1987. Throughout the next three decades, these camps often were operated in cooperation with other militant groups, including al Qaeda. [continued after the jump]

Stratfor and Barbara Feldon

 The latest Strafor article, with the Raymond Davis case as a starting point, discusses the tension between the CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) as they both operate in that country.

Fishing about for a Hot Stratfor Babe to accompany I naturally settled on Agent 99 from Get Smart. This posed a bit of a problem since there are two Agent 99s, Barbara Feldon of the TV series, and Anne Hathaway from the more recent movie remake of the show.

Bearing in mind the purposes of the Hot Stratfor Babe, which is just to lure unsuspecting traffic to this blog, Anne Hathaway would probably be the better choice of the two. Still, and I think we can all agree on this, Barbara Feldon pretty much owns the role. So, for that reason, I've chosen her as the Hot Strafor Babe for this article.  

By the way, at the end of the article, after the jump, I've added a bonus -- the video clip "Max and 99 meet the Sacred Cows".

PAKISTANI INTELLIGENCE AND THE CIA: MUTUAL DISTRUST AND SUSPICION

By Scott Stewart, March 3, 2011

On March 1, U.S. diplomatic sources reportedly told Dawn News that a proposed exchange with the Pakistani government of U.S. citizen Raymond Davis for Pakistani citizen Aafia Siddiqui was not going to happen. Davis is a contract security officer working for the CIA who was arrested by Pakistani police on Jan. 27 following an incident in which he shot two men who reportedly pointed a pistol at him in an apparent robbery attempt. Siddiqui was arrested by the Afghan National Police in Afghanistan in 2008 on suspicion of being linked to al Qaeda.

During Siddiqui's interrogation at a police station, she reportedly grabbed a weapon from one of her interrogators and opened fire on the American team sent to debrief her. Siddiqui was wounded in the exchange of fire and taken to Bagram air base for treatment. After her recovery, she was transported to the United States and charged in U.S. District Court in New York with armed assault and the attempted murder of U.S. government employees. Siddique was convicted in February 2010 and sentenced in September 2010 to 86 years in prison.

Given the differences in circumstances between these two cases, it is not difficult to see why the U.S. government would not agree to such an exchange. Siddique had been arrested by the local authorities and was being questioned, while Davis was accosted on the street by armed men and thought he was being robbed. His case has served to exacerbate a growing rift between the CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI).

Pakistan has proved to be a very dangerous country for both ISI and CIA officers. Because of this environment, it is necessary for intelligence officers to have security -- especially when they are conducting meetings with terrorist sources -- and for security officers to protect American officials. Due to the heavy security demands in high-threat countries like Pakistan, the U.S. government has been forced to rely on contract security officers like Davis. It is important to recognize, however, that the Davis case is not really the cause of the current tensions between the Americans and Pakistanis. There are far deeper issues causing the rift.

Sunday Links

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The facts of press bias.

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Afghanistan on the edge of disaster.

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Reasons for economic optimism.

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Al Qaida's defeat in Iraq.

Oktapodi.

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Declining air pollution is causing more rain.

10 reasons to write every day.

The huge terrorist suicide bomb in Pakistan.

Virtual boyfriends.

Nanoscopic meadows to drive your electric car.

Telepathy machines—sooner than you think.

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What's coming and what's going?

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The Orwell olympics.

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When Google throws the switch.

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The ability to stand apart.

Here comes the eyeball camera.

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The rising flood of militant Islam in Pakistan.

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The flat atom and its uses.

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Skinheads in Russia.

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