Recent content by Ariopagus

Can anyone help? Those who wish to learn more about specific conflicts can usually turn to a readily available outline chronology of military operations to provide a clear sequence of events. I am working on counter-terrorist operations in Pakistan as part of the initial research for my...

I have been trying to understand the events and aftermath of the Taliban attack and captured of Pakistani troops in the North West Frontier in July 2007. I believe they were from the Baloch Regiment, but it is unclear how this came about or what happened to the captured soldiers afterwards...

Here are the rest of the Recommendations and Conclusions from the start of this report: TRANSITION TO AFGHAN CONTROL Progress on security transition 8. We recommend that in its response to this Report, the Government explains what planning is currently being undertaken across different...

On 2 March 2011 he UK Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee published a highly critical report about British military and political efforts to counter terrorism in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The full report is over 200 pages long and can be found at...

Dear IPakMan Many thanks for your very entertaining post which has been much enjoyed by a number of my German and British friends here in Oxford. At first I thought you might be serious, but then one of my friends pointed out that this was actually an example of the famous Jewish sense of...

I have to agree with Tang0. There is much to be criticised about Israel's behavior towards displaced Arabs, its neighboring states and the occupied strips, not least the blatantly illegal building of settlements on Arab territory on the West Bank, but it is quite unrealistic to think of...

Obviously as a German I am prejudiced in favour of the HK G36, although it has certain problems, especially the habit of the optics steaming up at key moments. The Mexican rifle is just a copy of the original and I have heard that there are now legal issues between HK and the Mexican...

Perhaps I can politely point out that, contrary to some of the posts, Palestine was never a British colony. It was of course part of the Ottoman Empire and fell into British hands in 1918. The British then ran the territory as a mandate created by the League of Nations. There was already a...

So you think that it is possible for Pakistan to separate the destruction of Indian military facilities from their cities? Even in a country as large as India that will be difficult. Anyway, some installations, such as naval bases, tend to be co-located with major ports. I am afraid it is just...

So do you really think that Pakistan can wage a battlefield nuclear war against India and not have the Indians destroy the main population centres in return? In the late 1970s and early 1980s we had a debate in NATO about whether it would be possible for NATO and the Warsaw Pact to engage in...

As a foreigner who is strictly neutral in all this, I was struck by the extent to which the exchanges between Pakistani and Indian correspondents resemble the hostile attitudes seen in Europe at the height of the Cold War, now thankfully over. The fact that both countries appear to feel the...

Is there any indication that other foreign countries, apart from the USA, are also sending agents like Davis to undertake special operations inside Pakistan? I am sure that many must deploy intelligence officers to gather information, but are the Americans the only ones who are willing to...

Are we talking about number of weapons or about the actual megatonnage of the warheads? I have little doubt that the UK is considerably ahead of Pakistan in sheer nuclear firepower and of course its submarine force with Trident offers a range and degree of security that Pakistan lacks. The major...