Of all the classes I'm taking this year, I think my Islam in South Asia course has the potential to be the most interesting -- in part because it is all very much new frontiers for me personally in my studies, in part because of the increased profile of South and Central Asia in our post-9/11 security conceptions, and also in large part because of the professor himself. A former reporter in Afghanistan during the jihad (he briefly met bin Laden "back when he was nobody"), a former Pakistani ambassador to Sri Lanka, and an expert on political Islam in its various permutations, Professor Haqqani leavens his considerable personal experience (he's recently mentioned his friend former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto as a possible guest speaker at some point in class) by engaging readily with his students; a diplomat's skills at personability, no doubt.

In any case, my having come to the class already familiar with (and with plenty more questions about) the broad outlines of the Afghan conflict and the twin roles of Pakistan and the US in shaping the anti-Soviet jihad through having read Steve Coll's Ghost Wars has given me a bit of a rapport with him, but not so much that I wasn't rather startled when out of the blue in class last Thursday he asked me if I'd be willing to comb through the book for some quotes he would be using in a book he's working on. Well... sure, why not? I've certainly never been asked to be a research assistant before (if you could call it that) but hey, I'm not about to pass up the opportunity. So last weekend, borrowing his copy of the book (Amazon just delivered mine yesterday), I set about skimming over the pages again looking for quotes (which, having compiled and handed on to him last Monday, I've now got burning a hole in my hardrive waiting to be put to use in some blog posts; I've attached the complete list I found at the end of this post for others' use, and there are a lot of them -- the one in this post's title on page 166 definitely being my personal favorite) on the liasons between the US CIA and the Pakistani ISI and how the Americans were initially content to a great extent to sit back and allow the Pakistanis control where US money would be funnelled. This lax oversight of American money and materiel is a dominant theme in the early parts of Coll's book, -- having set the CIA to the goal of bleeding the Soviets, the Americans in Islamabad and Washington, D.C. left questions of who would be undertaking that task (and thus gaining training and support) and what kind of political future might follow to Pakistan's ISI and ruling junta under the political Islamist General Zia ul-Haq.    more »

I'm really not sure what I think yet. I'm interested
mostly in the regional governors move rather than the political party move.
The politician class has been totally unable to develop representative
parties, and I'm not sure this would hurt them -- might actually force them
to get their acts together. I'll have to look at the measures with more
care.

As for the governors, I always have a lot of sympathy for the Kremlin when
it comes to wanting to control the regional governors. It's such a big f**ng
country, and the government is so d**mnd ineffective. The governors are a
kind of blend of king of the local scene and French intendents of
departements. The Kremlin doesn't have a lot of coherent strings to pull,
carrots & sticks. The various ministries have their local branches, but
that's the government, not the Kremlin (never confuse the two). And in any
event, the Russians have similar problems as the Chinese with capture by the
locals of the regional branches of the government.With some of the regions,
it's like negotiating with a quasi-sovereign nation over whether they'll pay
taxes and how much. It's a lot more of a bother, in many ways, than the
challenge the oligarchs present. If regional elections had become a method
by which parties organized a power base and channeled policy and influence
up and down the ladder, then I'd see this as anti-democratic. I'm not all
that sure it's terribly clear cut (as one must admit is usually the case
with Russia).

As for how the populations is reacting overall, it will be a mixed bag. But
a lot of Russians would like a government that worked and wasn't so corrupt.
Putin has struck a chord there. And he basically faced up to the fact he had
personally failed on the major issue on which he had risen to power. No
bobbing and weaving on that matter unlike some other less, what's the word,
"forthright"? leaders we might mention.

Putin is sending signals he's willing to find accommodation methods with
more moderate Chechen groups. He's trying to split the rebels into those one
might do business with and outcasts. He has the broader problem of
reconciling the other fights within the Caucasus region, and the border
issues that aren't Chechen. But he's absolutely baffled by the school
massacre. That wasn't a gesture within a bargaining process that would lead
to a political resolution. Heaven knows its purpose, but it's not something
that he could respond to even if he would.

I haven't been following internal issues like the regions at all, let alone
with any care. I've been picking up some stuff on a few bits of the most
recent moves by Putin and will continue to do so, but I think I'm going to
let it ripen.

In response to your question, where do I think I'm going with all this. I'll try to give you a few more thoughts ranging from a couple of details to the wildly abstract. So it best belongs under the "musings" category.

I really like all the stuff you're posting. It's exactly the sort of experimental mix I'd hoped you'd put together. It's got lots of variety. Some headlines, when they've got serious implications, like the withdrawal of NGOs from Iraq. The quotes on democracy both make a great set of points and are useful to have stuffed away in the "filing cabinet." And the set of pieces that ask fundamental questions on Iraq are excellent and deserve some followup, as I mentioned I'd give on the Posner piece.

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