Fact x Importance = News (Nov 17)

I'm fully recovered after spending Saturday evening at a friend's parents', after his Californian mum organised a party to celebrate Obama's victory. The pressure was on when word got around just before the election-themed quiz that I was an American Studies postgraduate, but luckily I put everything I'd learnt reading Enduring America to good use and helped my team ensure victory:

I wanted us to be called 'The Maverick Renegades', but apparently the name was too long.

What other important stories happened last week?:

• The top two American intelligence officials expect to lose their jobs soon after Obama becomes President.


• There is debate as to whether the Democrats can investigate Bush administration officials for alleged abuses carried out during the 'war on terror'.


• Jason Burke thinks we should lower our expectations for Afghanistan.


• Activists in Tuscon, Arizona are using guerrilla art to protest hardline anti-immigrant law enforcement officials.


• Nobody knows what China's new hospital ship is for.


• Dubai has gone bust.

Let us know what you think of these stories, and what other stories you've been watching, in the comments.

Fact x Importance = News: Pakistan

There have been a swirl of news stories in the last 72 hours about the conflicts in Afghanistan and the Northwest Frontier of Pakistan. Beyond the escalation in bombings and shootings, the most significant may offer clues to future US policy.

These three articles, in particular, raised eyebrows. On Tuesday Antony Loyd in The Times of London and , Ben Farmer in The Daily Telegraph, and Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah in the New York Times reported that they had found "Taliban maps, manuals and propaganda...at training camps in Pakistan showing the sophistication of the insurgent's operations in the country's tribal areas". Perlez and Shah wrote of "tunnels [that] stretched for more than half a mile and were equipped with ventilation systems so that fighters could withstand a long siege. In some places, it took barrages of 500-pound bombs to break the tunnels apart." Loyd's dramatic narrative spoke of a map "which is not the work of a renegade gunman resistant to central authority; it is the assessment of a skilled and experienced fighter, and begins to explain how more than 400 Pakistani soldiers have been killed or wounded since August in Bajaur". It was Farmer, however, who offered the chilling sentence: "Britain and America...believe that Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, has been in Bajaur."

With respect to Perlez/Shah, Loyd, and Farmer, the significance of their reports was not their discovery. It is not surprising, given the porous Afghan-Pakistani border, that Taliban --- many of whose leaders were educated in Pakistani madrassas --- would be in the Northwest Frontier. And it would be a very poor, or foolhardy, fighter who would wander around without a map or a few leaflets to try and win converts to the cause. No, the significance of the stories is in the answer to the question: how did reporters for two British newspapers and the top print outlet in the United States suddenly make the same discovery?

Because all the reporters were taken there by the Pakistani military, who were at hand to emphasise (in the exact same words in the two articles), "There were students here taking notes on bomb-making and guerrilla warfare." Loyd took his piece further with the help of an "eminent Pakistani political figure": "Al-Qaeda and the Taleban...set up a joint headquarters in 2004 as an 'Islamic emirate' in North Waziristan, headed by Sirajuddin Haqqani, an Afghan Taleban commander." The tribal areas were "today the same as Afghanistan was before September 11 - controlled by foreign and local militants who fight a war on both sides of the border.”

So the Pakistanis, having lost more than 400 soldiers in fighting in the Northwest Frontier since August, have launched a PR campaign to establish the need for further and, presumably, more aggressive operations. It's not just a question of Pakistani troops, however.

Note Perlez's reference to tunnels which can only be blown apart by 500-pound bombs. The military branch with the majority of those bombs is not the Pakistani Air Force; it's their American counterparts. While it was Pakistanis who took the Western journalists to Bajaur, there should be no doubt: this is also part of an American campaign to justify continuing "hot pursuit" operations into the Northwest Frontier, even at the cost of civilian casualties.

And even at the possible cost to the Pakistani Government. A notable absence in all three stories was any comment from members of the Zardari Administration, unless Loyd's mysterious "eminent political figure" happens to be the Prime Minister in disguise.

Increasingly, it's looking like US forces are working with Pakistani military, who in turn are distinct from the purported political leaders of Pakistan. The implications of that co-operation, and effective internal split in the Pakistani ruling elite, may be far more significant than any more tunnels that intrepid Western journalists happen to "discover".