Reconsidering American strategy in South Asia: destroying terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan's tribal areas

Over seven years after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States, Afghanistan is again at the forefront of the headlines, faced with a brutal insurgency and a resurgent Taliban. Many scholars and policymakers attribute the instability in Afghanistan to a terrorist sanctuary in the neighboring Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Pakistan has attempted to eliminate this sanctuary through negotiation and armed force. This paper argues that Pakistani strategy has failed to achieve its desired results because of local tribal norms, the weak nature of previous agreements, military units ill-equipped for a counterinsurgency and counterterrorism role, as well as ideological fissures in the Pakistani establishment. Afterward, the paper argues that the United States and Coalition forces should pursue their strategy remaining cognizant of local tribal norms, step up training efforts for Pakistani forces, promote development of the tribal areas, and cultivate options for eliminating the FATA sanctuary through covert means.     

文革时期地下诗歌创作的政治处境与悲剧性内涵——以“白洋淀诗群”为主体

文革时期的地下诗歌是中国当代文学发展过程中的特殊现象。他们对政治乌托邦的解构,对诗歌语言和形式的探索,以及在这一过程中所体现出的悲剧性内涵,对后来的诗歌发展具有启示意义。这些诗歌所显示的复杂性、探索性和悲剧性内涵,直到今天仍具有一定的认识价值和审美价值。     

Winning with warlords in Afghanistan

A fundamental contradiction has been built into America's intervention in Afghanistan since the first days of the war in 2001. On the one hand, US policymakers have viewed the promotion of liberal democracy, economic development, and strong centralized state institutions as essential to achieve victory over the long term. On the other hand, however, the US has relied on local warlords to win its battles against the Taliban from the first days of the intervention. The Obama administration's tortured policy review reflects the intractable dilemmas involved in trying to build a modern democratic state while relying on local warlords as crucial allies in the war against the Taliban.     

The Taliban's ‘military courts’

The Taliban's ‘code of conduct’, which lists rules of discipline for the fighters, has been widely discussed, but do the Taliban try to implement it? This article discusses the structures that the Taliban have put in place for this purpose and their evolution over the years. It assesses that while the Taliban's ‘military justice’ system is still work in progress, the fact that it has attracted a significant investment in human resources bears witness to a serious intent of the leadership. However, the Taliban's concern with the behaviour of their fighting force is driven by their own political calculus, not by any sympathy for the international law of conflict.     

后设认知与网络续航——大学古诗词鉴赏课教学策略再探讨

后设认知本为一种学习策略,但其中有关学习调节、学习监督与自我评价等内容,却与课堂教学策略的实施息息相关,可为课堂教学改革提供一定的理论支撑。基于后设认知理论,将学生获取相关网络学习资源的课余任务纳入课堂教学体系,不仅有利于提高学生对古诗词的认知能力,更有益于我们有效地开展大学古诗词的教学改革。     

试论李白乐府诗歌的思想风格

李白乐府诗歌在对汉魏乐府继承发展的基础上有所创新,李白乐府在思想内容方面形成独特风格,最主要的特点体现为一个“真”字。     

India’s Taliban Dilemma: To Contain or to Engage?

India’s Afghanistan policy in the 1990s is termed a zero-sum game of influence with Pakistan. New Delhi’s aversion to the pro-Pakistan Taliban regime is considered a marker of this rivalry. This paper revisits India’s approach towards Afghanistan and examines if New Delhi was necessarily averse to engaging with pro-Pakistan political factions during 1990s. Based on fresh primary interviews with former Indian policymakers, media archives, and official reports, the paper shows that India engaged with and accommodated pro-Pakistan factions after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 until 1996. The Taliban’s rise to power in Kabul in September 1996 challenged India’s engage-with-all approach. Nonetheless, the decision to sever ties with the Taliban and to bolster anti-Taliban factions was highly debated in New Delhi. Many in India saw the Taliban as a militant Islamist force sponsored by Pakistan. For others, however, it was an ethno-nationalist movement representing Pashtun interests, and not necessarily under Islamabad’s control.     

Brinkmanship,not COIN,in Pakistan’s post-9/11 Internal War

Politics is critical to making sense of Pakistani successes and failures in dealing with non-state armed groups. This includes domestic political currents; regional political currents; and the global impetus of the post-9/11 era. How these currents overlap renders to any reading of insurgency in Pakistan real complexity. This article engages with this complexity rather than shirking from it. Its hypothesis is that while the insurgency bordering Afghanistan has been an epicentre of Pakistani military efforts to fight the Taliban, this theatre is in of itself insufficiently inclusive to grasp the nature of Pakistan’s security challenges and its consequent responses.     

Beyond the Double Game: Lessons from Pakistan’s Approach to Islamist Militancy

States commonly take one of three approaches to militant groups on their soil: collaboration; benign neglect; or belligerence. All three approaches are present in Pakistan, where some groups also move back and forth among these categories. I employ the term “coopetition” to capture this fluidity. The dynamic nature of militancy in Pakistan makes the country an excellent laboratory for exploring a state’s assessment of the utility an Islamist militant group offers, and the threat it poses relative to other threats informs the state’s treatment of that group. In this article, I put forward a typology that situates Islamist militants in Pakistan in one of the above four categories. I also illustrate how a group’s identity, objectives, and alliances inform assessments of its utility and threat relative to other threats. In addition to enhancing our understanding of militant–state dynamics, this taxonomy builds on and helps to unify earlier typologies of Pakistani militancy.     

关于意境问题的思考

长期以来 ,在中国古典诗歌的研究中 ,意境都是作为评价诗歌艺术水准的重要标准 ,有时甚至是惟一标准。这种评价标准直接限制了评价者的视线 ,也不符合诗歌创作的实际。本文就此进行了辨析 ,并明确指出 :意境本身只是一个诗歌评价的艺术概念 ,在不同的环境条件下 ,意境本身也是有高低之分的。