'Pashtunistan' holds key to Obama mission

[Bozita]

Source: Guardian (UK), The Observer

'Pashtunistan' holds key to Obama mission
The mountainous borderlands where Afghanistan meets Pakistan have been described as a Grand Central Station for Islamic terrorists, a place where militants come and go and the Taliban trains its fighters. Now Barack Obama has made solving the 'Af-Pak' question a top priority. But could the battle to tame the Pashtun heartland become his Vietnam?

Jason Burke in London, Yama Omid in Kabul, Paul Harris in Washington, Saeed Shah in Islamabad and Gethin Chamberlain in Delhi
The Observer, Sunday 15 February 2009
Article history


Relaxing one evening last week at the Cuckoo's Cafe, a rooftop restaurant in the heart of the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, Barack Obama's special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan seemed on the point of causing a major incident.

As ever in the region, there had been no warning. The weather was just right, a warm late winter evening. The view was even better - unmarred by the security subtly positioned on surrounding buildings. From his table, Richard Holbrooke, 67, the diplomat charged with calming what fellow members of the administration call the most dangerous place in the world, looked out over the giant Badshahi mosque and the imposing Lahore Fort, both more than 300 years old. Carefully invited politicians, writers, human rights activists and journalists from Lahore's liberal elite chatted at tables around him.

It was not that Holbrooke did not enjoy the barbecued spicy kebabs, Lahore's speciality, it was just he had one special request. He wanted daal, the plain lentil curry that is the humblest dish in South Asia. For such a distinguished guest, none had been prepared. "The bulldozer", credited with negotiating an end to the war in the Balkans in the 1990s, usually gets his way and this time was no exception. Daal was soon on its way.

Tonight Holbrooke will land at the Palam air force base, adjacent to the main civilian airport in New Delhi. It will be the last stop on a journey that has led the diplomat across the broad swathe of territory stretching from central Afghanistan to Pakistan's Indus river. Call it the central front of the global "war on terror", the fulcrum of the "arc of crisis", Pashtunistan or simply, in the most recent neologism, "AfPak", no one doubts that this is the biggest foreign policy headache for Obama's new team.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/15/afghanistan-pakistan-obama

[aquart]

1. We'll have to start frisking returning soldiers for emeralds.

Pashtun emeralds are really pretty.