13 November, 2006

Neobans and Neocons

News Central Asia has an article entitled "The Neobans and the Neocons" which examines what the author, a Karachi lawyer, calls the USA's "aggressive and expansionist agenda in the South and Central Asia and Middle East." Essentially, it is a potted Pakistani history of the War on Terror in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including Waziristan, covering al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Waziri Accord; it refers to the latter as the MiramShah Agreement, after the place where it was signed.

It contains nothing startlingly new but it does provide a useful historical time-line and general reference to past events. Moreover, it is both interesting and instructional to view those events, and the roles in them of al Qaeda and the Taliban, from a Pakistani perspective. The fairly long article is split into four parts.

Part One;

Part Two;

Part Three;

Part Four.

The term "neoban" does not appear outside the title and I can find no relevant reference to the word , so the author may be victim of a sub-editor and a fairly awful pun on Taliban.

No comments: