Search Results for: Pakistan

Palantir, the War on Terror’s Secret Weapon

Longreads Pick

Depending where you fall on the spectrum between civil liberties absolutism and homeland security lockdown, Palantir’s technology is either creepy or heroic. Judging by the company’s growth, opinion in Washington and elsewhere has veered toward the latter. Palantir has built a customer list that includes the U.S. Defense Dept., CIA, FBI, Army, Marines, Air Force, the police departments of New York and Los Angeles, and a growing number of financial institutions trying to detect bank fraud. These deals have turned the company into one of the quietest success stories in Silicon Valley—it’s on track to hit $250 million in sales this year—and a candidate for an initial public offering. Palantir has been used to find suspects in a case involving the murder of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent, and to uncover bombing networks in Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. “It’s like plugging into the Matrix,” says a Special Forces member stationed in Afghanistan who requested anonymity out of security concerns. “The first time I saw it, I was like, ‘Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap.’”

Source: Businessweek
Published: Nov 22, 2011
Length: 15 minutes (3,912 words)

The Journalist and the Spies

Longreads Pick

I met Saleem Shahzad nine days before he disappeared, and he seemed to know that his time was running out. It was May 20th, and Islamabad was full of conspiracy theories about the Abbottabad raid: bin Laden was still alive; Kiyani and Pasha had secretly helped the Americans with the raid. Mostly, the public radiated anger and shame. … “Look, I’m in danger,” he said. “I’ve got to get out of Pakistan.” He added that he had a wife and three kids, and they weren’t safe, either. He’d been to London recently, and someone there had promised to help him move to England.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Sep 19, 2011
Length: 37 minutes (9,278 words)

The Triple Agent

Longreads Pick

The CIA believed he was a “golden source,” a top-secret informant who had penetrated al-Qaeda and brought the agency within striking distance of the terrorist group’s senior leadership. But Humam al-Balawi, a Jordanian pediatrician turned spy, was not what he seemed. In late 2009, several months before the CIA learned of Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani hideout, Balawi appeared to offer the agency the best chance in a decade to find and kill al-Qaeda’s then-No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. But his stunning reports from inside the terrorists’ camp were part of an elaborate trap that culminated in the deaths of nine intelligence operatives, including seven Americans, at a CIA base in eastern Afghanistan.

Source: Washington Post
Published: Jun 22, 2011
Length: 10 minutes (2,543 words)

The Double Game

Longreads Pick

India has become the state that we tried to create in Pakistan. It is a rising economic star, militarily powerful and democratic, and it shares American interests. Pakistan, however, is one of the most anti-American countries in the world, and a covert sponsor of terrorism. Politically and economically, it verges on being a failed state. And, despite Pakistani avowals to the contrary, America’s worst enemy, Osama bin Laden, had been hiding there for years—in strikingly comfortable circumstances—before U.S. commandos finally tracked him down and killed him, on May 2nd.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: May 9, 2011
Length: 12 minutes (3,160 words)

The Battle for Tora Bora

Longreads Pick

Tora Bora was not yet a familiar name to many Americans. But what would unfold there over the subsequent days remains, eight years later, the single most consequential battle of the war on terrorism. Presented with an opportunity to kill or capture Al Qaeda’s top leadership just three months after September 11, the United States was instead outmaneuvered by bin Laden, who slipped into Pakistan, largely disappeared from U.S. radar, and slowly began rebuilding his organization. #Sept11

Published: Dec 1, 2009
Length: 22 minutes (5,542 words)

The Man Behind Bin Laden

Longreads Pick

Last March, a band of horsemen journeyed through the province of Paktika, in Afghanistan, near the Pakistan border. Predator drones were circling the skies and American troops were sweeping through the mountains. The war had begun six months earlier, and by now the fighting had narrowed down to the ragged eastern edge of the country. Regional warlords had been bought off, the borders supposedly sealed. For twelve days, American and coalition forces had been bombing the nearby Shah-e-Kot Valley and systematically destroying the cave complexes in the Al Qaeda stronghold. And yet the horsemen were riding unhindered toward Pakistan. #Sept11

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Sep 16, 2002
Length: 87 minutes (21,897 words)

An Army of One

Longreads Pick

Equipped with little more than a sword he’d bought on a home-shopping network, a pair of night-vision goggles, and the blessing of a vengeful Christian God, 50-year-old ex-con Gary Faulkner traveled to the most volatile region of Pakistan to capture Osama bin Laden.

Source: GQ
Published: Sep 1, 2010
Length: 28 minutes (7,061 words)

View Is Bleaker Than Official Portrayal of War in Afghanistan

Longreads Pick

As the new American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, tries to reverse the lagging war effort, the WikiLeaks documents sketch a war hamstrung by an Afghan government, police force and army of questionable loyalty and competence, and by a Pakistani military that appears at best uncooperative and at worst to work from the shadows as an unspoken ally of the very insurgent forces the American-led coalition is trying to defeat.

Published: Jul 25, 2010
Length: 8 minutes (2,132 words)

By Bread Alone

Longreads Pick

Some Pakistanis have begun blaming Afghan immigrants for bringing “their” war into Pakistan—one Afghan baker’s story of harassment, corruption, and exile.

Published: Jul 1, 2010
Length: 15 minutes (3,954 words)

The Professor of War

Longreads Pick

At 57, General David Petraeus has revolutionized the way America fights its wars, starting with the surge in Iraq and continuing into his current command, with responsibility for Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Yemen.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: May 1, 2010
Length: 45 minutes (11,270 words)