Afghanistan Read Free Page A

Miranshah.
    April 2007: Musharraf attempted removal of Chief Justice Iftikhar. Mohammed Chaudry starts crisis.
    17 July 2007: Former King Zahir Shah dies.
    29 July 2007: Lal Masjid incident in Islamabad. Pakistan security forces move against radical mosque associated with insurgents.
    9–13 August 2007: First peace jirga in Kabul with Musharraf and Karzai.
    6 October 2007: Musharraf reelected by national and provincial assemblies, oppositions boycott elections.
    3 November 2007: Musharraf declares state of emergency.
    December 2007: Pakistan Taliban unites under TTP umbrella organization.
    27 December 2007: Assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
    18 February 2008: Election in Pakistan. PPP wins largest share of vote.
    12 June 2008: Paris conference on Afghanistan.
    18 August 2008: Resignation of Pakistan’s President Musharraf.
    26–27 November 2008: Mumbai is site of apparent Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist attack, evidence points to it being launched from Pakistan.
    16 February 2009: NWFP government makes agreement with TNSM giving them effective control of Swat valley.
    February 2009: Pakistan military launches offensive in South Waziristan, withdraws after inflicting heavy casualties on insurgents.
    March 2009: Political crisis in Pakistan as Supreme Court blocks former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz from holding office. Resolved, followed by return to office of Chief Justice Chaudry.
    27 March 2009: US Obama administration announces strategic review, appointment of Ambassador Richard Holbrooke as special envoy of Afghanistan and Pakistan (“AfPak”).
    25 April—June 2009: Pakistan military launches two-division operation to reclaim Swat from TNSM.
    5 August 2009: Death of TTP leader Behtullah Mehsud in US UAV attack.
    20 August 2009: Afghan presidential elections lead to widespread accusations of fraud.
    August 2009: McChrystal report. Assessment of situation in Afghanistan leaked to press, leads to prolonged public consideration of request for more US military personnel to deploy to Afghanistan.
    17 October 2009: Pakistan military launches offensive into South Waziristan.
    1 November 2009: Afghan presidential election runoff prevented by concession of Dr. Abdullah.
    25 November 2009: Pakistan announces it will prosecute seven alleged planners of the Mumbai attack.
    1 December 2009: US presidential address on Afghanistan announces additional troop deployments but concentrates on an exit strategy, with troop withdrawals to begin in 2011.

AFGHANISTAN
    PROLOGUE
OUT OF THE VORTEX
“The vortex is the point of maximum energy. All experience rushes into this vortex. All the energized past, all the past that is living and worthy to live. All MOMENTUM, which is the past bearing upon us, RACE, RACE-MEMORY, instinct charging the PLACID, NON-ENERGIZED FUTURE. The DESIGN of the future is in the grip of the human vortex. All the past that is vital, all the past that is capable of living into the future, is pregnant in the vortex, NOW!”
    —Ezra Pound, “The Turbine,”
    BLAST, no. 1, 20 June 1914.
    T hey do not read a lot of Ezra Pound in South Waziristan, the Bajaur Agency of Pakistan, or the Doia Chopan district of Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province. If they did, some of the bearded hard men with their Kalashnikovs, laptop computers, Korans, and limitless faith in their cause would undoubtedly find his description appealing. The capital letters and demands for immediate action to sweep away a bankrupt and immoral status quo fits their mixture of absolutist totalitarian Islam and resentful nationalism, a created past intended to give direction and legitimacy to the desired future.
    Where Pound opposed the modern world through poetry and his crankish love of totalitarian ideology, the hard men oppose the post-modern worldusing explosives, crashing airplanes and bodies everywhere. The hard men are really not about building. They are about destroying, for all their belief that living under Islamic Sharia law