Al Qaeda’s New Manifesto Admits Defeat

Updated: [Last night I put down my initial thougthts and today I’m expanding a few sentences with some analysis.]

I’ve said for a long time that AQ and the Taliban pretend to be world Islamists looking for Kalipha as a recruiting tool, but that they are really collective gangs of regional thugs set on temporal power and protection racketeering. Their goal is (and was always) power within the Islamic world, and with their new manifesto they accept defeat from the west and have decided to turn inward.

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Pakistan Update

There are a few good articles with many details on the destabilizing conditions inside Pakistan right now as their civil war continues.

From Time Reporter Aryn Baker in Islamabad comes this report, detailing not only the war fronts, but also the politcal instability due to infighting between PPP (Zardari) and PML-N (Sharif) continues over non-essential matters. (side note, PPP and MQM seem to have reached some accomodation and we might see that as the future coalition, this even though they are rancorous rivals especially in Karachi.)

Bill Roggio has an update on a rare instance of cross-border cooperation on the Durand line.

Inside Pakistan the Taliban insurgency continues unabated as another checkpost is destroyed in Wana, and the Frontier Corps seized a huge weapons cache and might have freed those captive Iranian Border guards.