Today's Stories

December 8, 2008

Michael Hudson
Obama's Favoritism: Wall Street, Not the Auto Industry

December 5 / 7, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Honeymoans From the Left

Brian Cloughley
Shambles in Afghanistan

Paul Craig Roberts
Muslim Revolution: How Washington Arrogance Helped Drive the Mumbai Attacks

Liaquat Ali Khan
Mumbai and the Kashmir Tinderbox

Farzana Versey
Mumbai's Charge of the Lightweight Brigade

Peter Lee
Pakistan Nears the Breaking Point

Peter Morici
Slouching Toward a Depression?

Ralph Nader /
Toby Heaps
Junk Cap-and-Trade

Yinon Cohen /
Neve Gordon
Obama Could End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Will He Meet the Challenge?

Wajahat Ali
Perverse Justice: the Holy Land Foundation Convictions

Johnny Barber
Aswad's Story: Illegal Detention and the Declaration of Human Rights

Alan Farago
Fallout from the Pass-Through Economy

Jeremy Scahill
Obama Doesn't Plan to End Occupation of Iraq

Mike Whitney
Powergrab in Ottawa

Ranjit Hoskote
Jahiliyya Versus Jihad

Carl Finamore
Thank God I'm an Atheist! (Or Boy is Bill O'Reilly in for a Big Surprise)

Marjorie Cohn
Obama and Women's Rights

Norm Kent
Tommy Chong, the Unanticipated Warrior

Missy Beattie
What Lies Ahead

Binoy Kampmark
Committing Suicide On-Line: the Briggs Case

David Macaray
The Best and the Brightest Redux: Too Many Brains, Not Enough Humility

Nancy Stohlman
Relational Activism

Ron Jacobs
Irreverent Politics Then and Now

David Yearsley
Thematics From the Golden Past

Lorenzo Wolff
Troubled Songs of Home and War

Poets' Basement
Orloski: The Door Opener

Website of the Weekend
In Prison My Whole Life

December 4, 2008

Ece Temelkuran
Inside the Ergenekon Case

Ralph Nader
Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Who Will Seize the Moment?

Harry Browne
The Bush-Obama National Security Strategy

Eamonn Fingleton
The American Car Industry: a Riposte to the Knockers

Conn Hallinan
The Syria Attack

Mike Whitney
Fiasco in Somalia: Another CIA Cock-Up

Stewart J. Lawrence
Obama and Latinos: Richardson, Alone, is Not Enough

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Message to Obama: Stop Killing Afghanis

Karyn Strickler
Show Us the Green, Before We Show You the Money

Jennifer Matsui
Obama-Cola: the Great National Temperance Beverage

Website of the Day
"He Ain't Got Laid in a Month of Sundays..."

December 3, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
What's Wrong with the U.S. Military

Sheldon Rampton
Mormon Homophobia: Up Close and Personal

Robert Weissman
Nationalize GM

Yifat Susskind
From Mumbai to Washington

William Blum
The Obama Bummer: Vote First, Ask Questions Later

Alan Singer
The Ghost of the Defunct Economist

David Macaray
Trampled Under Foot at Wal-Mart

Martha Rosenberg
Born With a Statin Deficiency? Line Forms to the Left!

Mats Svensson
The Crimes Have No Period of Limitations

Website of the Day
Why Bill Richardson's Nomination Should be Opposed

December 2, 2008

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Kettle of Hawks

Paul Craig Roberts
The New Arms Race

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
The Mumbai Terror Attacks: Is Pakistan to Blame?

Sarah Anderson /
John Cavanagh
Skewed Priorities: How the Bailout Dwarfs Spending on Other Global Crises

William Blum
The Mythology of the War on Terrorism

John Ross
Mexico's Drug War Goes Down in Flames

Dave Lindorff
A Tale of Two Terror Attacks

Nicola Nasser
A Peace Process That Makes Peace Impossible

Steve Conn
Operation Redskin Removal

Robert Bryce
Coal Hard Facts

Website of the Day
Country, Funk, Soul

December 1, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
From Baghdad to Mumbai, by Way of Pakistan

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
Obama's Economic Team: Records of Failure

Vijay Prashad
The Fires in South Asia

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Foreign Crises

Joshua Frank
Madam Secretary Clinton and the Middle East

P. Sainath
The Unlikely Martyrdom of Free Market Jihad

Alan Farago
The Right's War on Regulators

Binoy Kampmark
Sydney's Ball and Chain

Chris Genovali
Silent Fall

David Michael Green
Hope You Die Before You Get Old

Stephen Martin
The Chinese are Coming, the Chinese are Coming!

Website of the Day
Robert Rubin: Coward, Liar or Both?

November 28-30, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Time of Trouble

Mike Whitney
The Obama "Dream Team": Rubin Clones and Other Fakers

Ted Honderich
What is the Meaning of Obama's Election?

Tom Kerr
Preserving Filthy Lucre (Or Becoming My Dad)

Mike Ely
The Conquest of New England

David Yearsley
Hymns of the Conquest

Deepak Tripathi
Uproar in Police-State Britain

Sonja Karkar
Gaza's Death Throes

Ramzy Baroud
Salvation in a News Broadcast

Robert Weitzel
Israel's Settlement on Capitol Hill

Robert Roth
Can We Create a Movement for Change?

Carlos Fierro
Obama and the End of Racism?

David Macaray
How to Kill a Union

David Rosen
A New Sexual Agenda

James Cockcroft
Indigenous People Rising

Stan Cox
The Most Disappointing Gift

Steve Conn
Talking Turkey About College Basketball

Stephen Martin
The Electromagnetic Pulse and Economic Warfare

Richard Rhames
Busty Bimbettes, Bombs and Brand Obama

Kim Nicolini
Women as Products and Cannibalistic Achievers

Lorenzo Wolff
A Battle Cry for the Confused and Vulnerable

Poets' Basement
Woods, Harrison and Corseri

November 27, 2008

Tariq Ali
The Assault on Mumbai

Steve Hendricks
Thanksgiving We Can Believe In: Justice in Indian Country

Ralph Nader
Open Up Those Corporate Tax Returns

John Walsh
The Root Cause of the Crisis of 2008

Dave Lindorff
The Department of Homeland Lunacy

Christopher Brauchli
Thanks A Lot, Mr. Meese: How Alberto Gonzales Learned to Get You to Pay for His Legal Bills

Matthew Koehler
Giving Thanks for Burned Forests

Website of the Day
John Trudell: "Crazy Horse We Hear What You Say"

November 26, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Obama Letdown

Alan Farago
Bailouts and the New Math

Stanley Heller
Don't Bail Them Out, Take Them Over

Kevin Zeese
The Real Cost of the Bailout

Steve Conn
Now It Can Be Told (Except in North Carolina)

Ray McGovern
Kafka and Uighurs at Guantánamo

Ron Jacobs
King George is Gone: Now It's Time to Organize

Eric Walberg
Obama's Odious Entourage

Martha Rosenberg
Pay No Attention to That Turkey Being Slaughtered (Or How Sarah Palin Created a Whole New Generation of Vegetarians)

Matt Siegfried
Back to the Future With Barack

Website of the Day
"Every Time I've Compromised, I've Lost"

November 25, 2008

James Abourezk
Of Arrogance, Bailouts and the Big Three

Ralph Nader
Don't Suppress Carter

Patrick Irelan
PBS Reports for Big Oil on Venezuela

John Ross
Obama in Bedlam

Fred Gardner
Dr. Goodwin and the Infinite Con

Dan LaBotz
The Auto Crisis: a Big Caravan to Washington?

Tom Barry
Napolitano and Immigration Policy

Norman Solomon
The Ideology of No Ideology

Richard Morse
Memo From Haiti: Where the Culture of Corruption Meets the Corruption of Culture

Chris Strohm
The Missing Rules of Engagement in Cyberwar

Website of the Day
Green vs. Green?

November 24, 2008

Mike Whitney
You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

Pam Martens
The Rise and Fall of Citigroup

Laray Polk
Bush's Library: the Kurds, Oil and Missing Records

David Ker Thomson
American Friends: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Canadians?

Uri Avnery
Likud Rising

Joe Mowrey
Deprivation and Desperation in Gaza

Ramzi Kysia
An Administration in Search of a Progressive: the Team Obama Should Have Picked

Kevin Zeese
The Causes of the Auto Crisis

Dave Lindorff
Rescuing the Blob: Idiots and Bailouts

David Macaray
Seven Reasons You Should Join a Union

Howard Lisnoff
Inaugurations Past and Present

Website of the Day
I Hate the Beatles

November 21 / 23, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Honeymoon is Looking a Bit Wan

Michael Hudson
Paulson's Cascade of Lies

Mike Whitney
Time to Move to Plan B ... If There is One

Barbara Rose Johnston /
Holly M. Barker
Cautionary Tales From a Nuclear War Zone

Serge Halimi
The Gloom of Empire: Downhill All the Way

Alan Farago
The Suburbs March On

Ralph Nader
Changing With Retreads: the Third Clinton Administration

Saul Landau
When Old Axioms Don't Apply

Robert Bryce
From LBJ to Obama: the End of Texas Dominance

Shannon May
Ecological Crisis and Eco-Villages in China

Binoy Kampmark
The End of the Yugo

Jack Ely
The Fate of the West's Wild Horses

Ramzy Baroud
The Rights of Women in War Zones

Missy Beattie
Why Vote, Anyway?

Larry Portis
Women Soldiers Serving in (and Barely Surviving) the Israeli Army

James McEnteer
Colombia's Laboratory of Failure

Christopher Brauchli
A Tale of Two Whales

David Yearsley
Real Swords, Fire and Don Giovanni

Adam Engel
Power Down

Ron Jacobs
The Continuing Saga of the White Album

Lorenzo Wolff
Honky Tonk Heroes: When Country Got Real

Poets' Basement
Raza Ali Hasan

Website of the Weekend
Lips and Fingers

November 20, 2008

P. Sainath
The Jurassic Auto and Idea Park

Brian McKenna
How Dow Chemical Defies Homeland Security and Risks Another 9/11

Paul Craig Roberts
What Uncle Sam Has to Say to His Creditors

Andy Worthington
How Guanántamo Can be Closed

Peter Lee
India Doubles Down in Afghanistan ... Maybe

Dr. Eyad al-Serraj
At the Erez Crossing

Sen. Russ Feingold
The Bush Pardons

Lance Selfa
Who Made the New Deal?

Ray McGovern
Keeping Gates

Benjamin G. Davis
Ending Torture; Prosecuting the Torturers

Tracy McLellan
Obama's Crony Democracy: the Return of Tom Daschle

Website of the Day
Finally, a Victory for Palestinians

November 19, 2008

M. Shahid Alam
Obama and the Politics of Race and Religion in America

Mario A. Murillo
Holder, Chiquita and Colombian Death Squads

Martine Boulard
Escaping the Dollar's Shadow

Robin D. G. Kelley
Will Obama be the First "Freedom" Democrat?

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi
Obama and the Iron Cage

Jonathan Cook
Who Will Stop the Settlers?

Steve Conn
Spare Change or No Change at All

George Wuerthner
The NYT and the Beetles of Mass Destruction

Michael Winship
This Just in From Middle Earth

Stephen Martin
The Other Side of the Pleasure-Dome

Website of the Day
An Important Holiday Message From Kristen Johnston

November 18, 2008

Chellis Glendinning
Cheering for Morgan Stanley

George C. Wilson
Perils of Pakistan: Will It Prove to be Obama's Cambodia?

Franklin Lamb
Who Will Evict Israel from Lebanon: Hezbollah or the UN?

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Irresponsibility of Appointing Hillary Clinton Secretary of State

Roger Burbach
Orchestrating a Civic Coup in Bolivia: How Bush Tried to Bring Down Morales

John Ross
Drilling vs. Direct Democracy in Mexico

Wajahat Ali
Is Obama the Muslim World's Superman?

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
What Really Happened in Washington? The G20 and the Inconsistent Script

Marc Gardner
When Mooning is a Sex Crime

Eric Walberg
Courting the Bear: a New Era for Russian/Western Relations?

Wendy Williams
The Bottled Water Con

Website of the Day
Where's Zappa When We Need Him?

November 17, 2008

Michael Hudson
Bankers Shake Down Congress and the G-20

Paul Craig Roberts
When It's a Clear Day and You Can't See GM

Mike Whitney
Busted in Washington

Steve Conn
Where is Nader Country 2008? Mapping the Nader Votes

Andy Worthington
Closing Guantánamo: Advice for Obama

Jonathan Cook
The Real Goal of Israel's Blockade of Gaza: "They Are All Hamas"

Rannie Amiri
Dual Loyalties Will Doom Obama

David Macaray
Bailing Out the Automakers

David Michael Green
Twelve Victories

Charles Modiano
Sports Illustrated and Sexism: Tokenism or a New Day?

Website of the Day
The South Sea Bubble

November 14 / 16, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Heading for the First Hundred Days

Jeffrey St. Clair
How Bill Clinton Doomed the Spotted Owl: a Cautionary Tale for Greens in the Age of Obama

Mike Whitney
Paulson the Bungler

Sasan Fayazmanesh
RIP: the Experts, 1929-2008

Moshe Adler
Keynes: China's Greatest Export?

Anthony DiMaggio
Transcending Race?

Jean Bricmont
Cats, Dogs and Creationism

Sheldon Rampton
The Eisenstadt Hoax: a Real Life Example of a "Fake Fake"

Douglas Valentine
Let the Trials Begin!

Joseph Nevins /
Timothy Dunn
Barricading the Border

Tom Barry
Rahm Emanuel's Political Pragmatism on Immigration

Ron Jacobs
Che Guevara Meets Trashman: the Genius of Spain Rodriguez

Larry Portis
The State of the Israeli State

Mary Lynn Cramer Obama's Brain Trust: Seems Like Old Times

Sherry Wolf
The Myth of the Black/Gay Divide

Peter Cervantes-Gautschi
Secretary of Greed: How Larry Summers Championed Wall Street by Impoverishing the Mexican People

Jacob Hornberger
The Conservative Malaise: Hey, Brother, Can You Spare Some Habeas Corpus?

Lance Selfa
The Center-Right Nation Con

Benjamin Dangl
Vermont Against General Dynamics

Seth Sandronsky
Lifelines in Hard Times

Russell Mokhiber
Time to Give the Friends of Big Coal the Boot

Allan Stellar
Nuke a Gay Whale for the Navy

Kelly Overton
Get Thee to a Shelter: the Obamas and the Million-Mutt March

Martha Rosenberg
Why Mink are Cheering the Economic Crisis

Richard Rhames
Palling Around with Ray the Plumber

David Yearsley
How I Played Hooky from "High School Musical 3"

Lorenzo Wolff
Zach is Back: Songs of Hurt, Rage and Resistance

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Ford and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Eyes Have It

November 13, 2008

Pam Martens
The Two Trillion DollarBlack Hole

Vijay Prashad
Guilt by Participation: Sonal Shah's Membership Has Expired

Patrick Cockburn
Who is Paying for the Iraqi National Intelligence Service?

Jonathan Cook
The Withering Palestinian Economy

Ralph Nader
Obama and the Rogue Regime

Bill Quigley
McCain Owes America an Apology

Lee Sustar
Bailing Out the Big Three

Omar Barghouti
Boycotting Israeli Settlement Products

Steve Conn
More Alaska Fun

Howard Lisnoff
The Last Bastion of Hate

Jeff Cohen
What Indy Media Heroes Can Teach Us

Website of the Day
Who are the Obamagelicals?

November 12, 2008

Johanna Berrigan
Scattered Families: the Iraq Refugee Crisis

Steve Conn
The Big Mystery Election in Alaska

Patrick Bond
Against Volcker

Bokar Ture /
Dedrick Muhammad
Remembering a Black Radical in a Barack Obama America

Alan Farago
The Hispanic Vote in South Florida: Not Dyed Blue Yet

Dave Lindorff
Rescuing Joe Lieberman

Karl Grossman
Break Up Big Oil: Tyranny in the Tank

David Macaray
An Obama Litmus Test: Will Labor Have a Seat at the Table?

George Wuerthner
Act Now to Save America's Public Forests

Susie Day
Heavy Weather

Website of the Day
Does the Planet Have a Future? an Interview with Derrick Jensen

December 8, 2008

"If You Hung Me From a Meathook, I'd Probably Confess to Anything, Too"

Talking to a Lashkar Militant

By PATRICK COCKBURN

Lahore.

As the snow began to melt in the mountains Abdul Rahman, a teacher from  a school Lahore, began to make his way into Indian-controlled Kashmir,  moving slowly to avoid Indian army outposts. He lived on packets of cold  rice he kept inside his coat and would eat bit by bit. For a time he and his  two companions lived in a cave and once they got lost in a forest. 

Abdul Rahman was a member of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, the militant group  which India says trained and directed the ten gunmen who killed 171  people in Mumbai last month. But his military activities were directed  entirely against Indian forces in Kashmir. He did not find even low level  guerrilla warfare easy. He made contact with local sympathizers and spent  a month scouting the terrain so he could give a convincing account of  himself when he was stopped, as happened frequently, by Indian security  forces.      

Once he and the two men with him felt confident that they knew the  area they intended to operate in they made themselves available to local  insurgents to carry out attacks. These were generally small scale, such as  throwing a grenade at a colonel’s house. Abdul Rahman says that they did not bring weapons with them but these were supplied from sources in  India.    

After he returned to Pakistan Abdul Rahman would tell the story of his  adventures to young students at an Islamic school at Muridke 15 miles  north of Lahore which is run by the Jamaat-ud-Dawa movement. The fact  that he was able to move so easily between being a mountain guerrilla of Lashkar-e-Toiba and a teacher of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, discredits the latter’s  repeated claim that it is involved only in running schools, clinics and  providing charitable relief to the victims of earthquakes such as a recent  one in Baluchistan.

Instead there is convincing evidence that it acts as a  front group and a servicing organization for the fighters of the Lashkar-e- Taiba organization, though Pakistan’s weak civilian government would  have difficulty closing it down without provoking a conservative backlash.  Promises by previous Pakistani government’s to shut down Jihadi groups  accused of carrying out terrorist attacks have been openly flouted or  circumvented by a simple change of name. Even so, India and Washington  are likely to press for action against Jamaat-ud-Dawa as a sign that  Pakistan is willing and able to act against terrorist groups in the wake of  the Mumbai attack.     

The way in which pious young Pakistanis are channelled towards more  militant action is illustrated by the story of Bilal who devoted much of his time  from the age of twelve until he was nineteen to attending Jamaat-ud- Dawa school and other activities until he finanally became disillusioned.  Now he says he is doubtful “about making attacks in Kashmir without  being directly asked by local people. All we do is provoke action by the  Indian army against them and they are arrested and tortured.”    

Bilal did not always think this way. He described his experiences in  detail to The Independent sitting on the cement rim of a non-working  fountain just inside the gate of Lahore Zoo. Flanked by a painted plaster  elephant and a giraffe Bilal, an intelligent 19-year-old with dark eyes and a  thick black beard, explained how at the 75 acre complex of schools and  clinics at Muridke run by Jamaat ud-Dawa he had got up at 4am every  morning for prayer, religious studies and physical exercise. “They teach you to become a better human being,” he said. “Though they don’t  engage in Jihad themselves, they encourage people to move towards it.” 

Jihad may once only have been in Kashmir but these days it it might be  directed against anybody in any country such as Afghanistan or Iraq “were  Muslims are being oppressed.” Of his teachers Bilal says “they put passion into people.” He added that at the school Indians were commonly  called ‘kaffirs’ and westerners ‘Jews’.     

Did these teachers also put passion into young men who are alleged to  have travelled by boat from Karachi to Mumbai to engage in the mass  slaughter of civilians? None of the young militants in Lahore have any  direct knowledge of what happened. So far all the evidence has come from  the Indian side with the US confirming that it believes the case for attack  by planned and orchestrated by Lashkar-e-Taiba to be largely true. Bilal  says defensively that he does not believe that it was this group “They have always taken credit for what they have done in the past.”    

The one surviving gunman captured in Mumbai is Mohammed Ajmal  Kasab who says he was trained for eighteen months in four camps in  Pakistan. He also says he once met the Lashkar-e-Taiba leader  Mohammed Saeed and there is no doubt that that the latter is regarded  with deep reverence by Jamaat ud-Dawa members one of whom, in a  house off a back alley near Muridke, told a pious tale of how an Indian  agent had sought to assassinate Mohammed Saeed but before he could  kill him he had suddenly found he could not move his hands.

The  confessions of Kasab are treated with some cynicism by many Pakistanis  one of whom remarked “if you hung me upside down from a meat hook I  would probably confess to anything you wanted.” But he added that he  personally was convinced that Lashkar-e-Taiba was behind the Mumbai  attack “because it fits in with their tactics.”

Pakistan to swoop on militant leaders

Pakistan's security forces were poised over the weekend  to arrest the leaders, dismantle the infrastructure and close the training camps of Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Islamic militant group held responsible by India for the killings of 171 people in Mumbai, government sources said.

India and the US have demanded action by Pakistan against the group, which operates more or less openly in Lahore and all over Punjab using a charitable and educational movement, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, as a front organization. The Pakistani government has said it has yet to see proof that the Mumbai attack was carried out by Pakistanis, but independent evidence is emerging which confirms that the lone surviving gunman, Ajmal Amir Kasab, came from the village of Faridkot, south-west of Lahore.

Lashkar-e-Toiba's leader, Mohammed Hafeez Saeed, lives in Lahore and local observers predict his detention could provoke violence in the city. The Indian police say that, during his interrogation, Mr Kasab claimed he had once met Mr Saeed during his 18 months of training in four camps in Pakistan.

But Pakistani government resolve to take action against Lashkar-e-Toiba could be undermined by angry exchanges with India Saturday over a hoax telephone conversation between the Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and a caller pretending to be the Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee on 28 November. Mr Mukherjee denies the Pakistani claim that a conversation took place in which he threatened Pakistan with war. Pakistan insists the call came from the Indian External Affairs Ministry.

The dispute illustrates the depth of the suspicions between the two countries. The senior Pakistani diplomat in the UK, High Commissioner Wajid Hassan, said at the weekend that he believed India had been preparing to attack his country and that he warned both his own government and British officials of his concerns.

Another likely target of the government clampdown is the complex of clinics and schools of Jamaat-ud-Dawa at Muridke, 15 miles north of Lahore. Former students say that while it was not obligatory to become a jihadi, pledged to fight the oppressors of Muslims, they were encouraged to move in that direction. Children had a small image of a machine gun printed on their tunics. Teachers related how they had fought as Lashkar-e-Toiba fighters infiltrated into Indian-controlled Kashmir. Students received training in hand-to-hand combat.

The most significant move by the Pakistani government would be to close down the military training camps in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. Pakistani officials say they believe India considered launching air attacks on these in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks. Former students from Muridke have gone there for military training.

While Pakistani moves against Lashkar-e-Toiba might be more than cosmetic, they would not necessarily be effective. Although the group was formed in 1989 in collaboration with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, it does not follow that the ISI still has a measure of control over it. Since Pakistan stopped much of the border infiltration by Islamic fighters into Kashmir in 2004, many militants of groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba have developed close links with the Pakistan Taliban and al-Qa'ida. The motive behind the attack on Mumbai might have been to relieve the military pressure on these groups by provoking a crisis with India which would force the Pakistani army to withdraw from the Afghan border areas to face India.

The Pakistani government has hitherto said that it had been shown no convincing evidence that the Mumbai attack was launched from Pakistan or that Pakistanis had taken part. But this stance is undermined by the discovery that Mr Kasab did indeed come from Faridkot as he had claimed during interrogations. One villager confirmed that Mr Kasab's mother, Noor Elahi, had burst into tears when she saw him on television after his capture. Although she and her husband, Mohammed Amir, had left their house earlier in the week, their presence in the village was confirmed by the electoral roll. Villagers said that Lashkar-e-Toiba had significant support in the area.

The Pakistani government and military establishment are under intense pressure but do not want to be seen as caving in to India and the US. Since the peace process with India started in 2004 the infiltration of fighters from Pakistan into Kashmir has reportedly fallen by 85 per cent. But the Pakistanis feel that India has not responded to such conciliatory gestures and simply acts as if the Kashmir issue was resolved.

Taliban allies attack US supply vehicles in Peshawar

A measure of the violence now spreading across Pakistan was the attack yesterday morning by 200 pro-Taliban militants in the city of Peshawar on a depot where they set fire to 160 vehicles carrying supplies to American-led troops in Afghanistan. The successful assault highlights the threat to their supplies, three-quarters of which come through Pakistan.

Patrick Cockburn is the author of 'The Occupation: War, resistance and daily life in Iraq', a finalist for the National Book Critics' Circle Award for best non-fiction book of 2006. His new book 'Muqtada! Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia revival and the struggle for Iraq' is published by Scribner.

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