Afghanistan’s development indicators

As NATO is getting ready to pull its troops out of Afghanistan, a spin game is on: those who would like NATO to be seen in a positive light, are focussing on positive anecdotes, such as girls attending school, others point to the chaos and destruction that has unfortunately plagued Afghanistan fort he past three decades.

Here is how Afghanistan fares on human development indicators. See the graphs and come to your own conclusions:

Life expectancy

The average number of years a newborn is expected to live with current mortality patterns remaining the same.

 

 

Mortality rate, infant (per 1,000 live births)

Infant mortality rate is the number of infants dying before reaching one year of age, per 1,000 live births in a given year. Source: Harmonized estimates of the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the World Bank, based mainly on household surveys, censuses, and vital registration, supplemented by World Bank estimates based on household surveys and vital registration.

 

 

Mortality rate under 5

The probability per 1,000 that a newborn baby will die before reaching age 5.

 

 

Availability of contraceptives

Contraceptive prevalence rate is the percentage of women who are practicing, or whose sexual partners are practicing, any form of contraception. It is usually measured for married women ages 15-49 only. Source: Household surveys, including Demographic and Health Surveys by Macro International and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys by UNICEF.

Average number of births per woman

 

Immunization, measles (% of children ages 12-23 months)

Child immunization measures the percentage of children ages 12-23 months who received vaccinations before 12 months or at any time before the survey. A child is considered adequately immunized against measles after receiving one dose of vaccine. Source: World Health Organization and United Nations Children's Fund.

 

Primary completion rate, total (% of relevant age group)

Primary completion rate is the percentage of students completing the last year of primary school. It is calculated by taking the total number of students in the last grade of primary school, minus the number of repeaters in that grade, divided by the total number of children of official graduation age. Source: United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics.

 

Conflict spreading in Afghanistan over time

Based on the data retrieved from the Wikileaks it appears that the conflict in Afghanistan has spread over time.  The following series of images present frequency of attacks in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2009. Notice that in 2004 (the upper left corner), most attacks were concentrated along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, which is home to the Pashtuns in Afghanistan. This would also make sense since most Afghan Taliban are ethnic Pushtuns.

However, as one moves from 2004 to 2009, one sees a dramatic spreading of attacks along Afghan border, even along the Western border with Iran. The distribution of attacks in 2009 (lower right corner) suggests both an increase in the number of attacks as well as spreading of the conflict to parts of Afghanistan that were immune to the violence earlier.

It will be interesting to see what the latest numbers suggest in the post-surge Afghanistan.

Another interesting sidebar on the maps presented below is that the data analysis and the generation of the maps was done using R, which is a freeware stats software enabling social scientists to paint pictures with data that was not possible earlier.

Click on the image below to see the original post and a larger version of the image.

The above graphic has been produced by Drew Conway, who is a PhD student in political science at New York University. Drew studies terrorism and armed conflict; using tools from mathematics and computer science to gain a deeper understanding of these phenomena.

Democracy in action in Afghanistan

Two female MPs in the Afghan Parliament embellished their freedom to debate by throwing water bottles, shoes, and hurling punches. Democracy is in safe hands in Afghanistan.

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Millions of Afghans to go hungry

Image via WikipediaAs the NATO starts to wind down its operations in Afghanistan, the humanitarian organizations also start planning their exist. An unfortunate development in Afghanistan involves the World Food Programme (WFP) who announced recently that owing to insufficient funds, it will be unable to feed millions of Afghans.

This is a repeat performance from the last US exit from Afghanistan. As the Americans deserted Pakistan and Afghanistan in the mid eighties, the aid agencies followed the suit. WFP is perhaps offering a repeat performance.

International Development - WFP Downsizes Afghan Food Aid Operations

The Turkish doner kebob served with the Taliban sauce

Image by Community Eye Health Journal photos via FlickrIt is slowly going to dawn on the American policy-makers that it is impossible to sideline the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, the Pushtuns. The other important lesson for the Americans to learn is that the Taliban now hold sway over most Pushtuns in Afghanistan. This fact is not lost on Afghanistan's neighbours, Pakistan, and Iran, and others in the region including Turkey.

Thus the Turkish offer to recognize Taliban as a political force in Afghanistan and Pakistan's endorsement of the Turkish offer represent the fast-evolving balance of power in Afghanistan.

The fact that the Taliban are a  regressive force may not be a dominant concern for the neighbouring powers who are now occupied more with restoring normalcy in the region that has suffered significant political turmoil resulting in the the death of hundreds of thousands of Afghanis, Pakistanis, and others. A large number of those killed or injured are civilians caught in the crossfire between the murderous ideologies pursued by the Taliban and the NATO.

The hubris-laden defense policy pursued by Americans and the NATO may soon be exposed for its shallowness and shortsightedness when NATO's departure from the region would restore the balance in the Taliban's favour. One must then ask the question about the utility of a policy that achieved nothing but destroyed the lives and the livelihoods of one of the most deprived people on the planet.

Pakistan would back Taliban office in Turkey: official | World | DAWN.COM

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13-year old suicide bomber kills 13 Shiites in Lahore

Image via WikipediaThe Sunni militants are in full swing these days. They killed 18 Shiites in Iraq yesterday and a 13-year old suicide comber has killed 13 Shiites in Lahore today. There is no end in sight to the senseless violence that has been perpetrated by the Sunni militants against Shiites in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan.

The intra-Sunni violence has also increased in the recent past. This begs the question: If a strong pacifist movement fails to emerge amongst Sunnis soon, will Sunni Islam decline into a violence-ridden belief system that may be shunned by the rest of the civilized world.

Lahore suicide attacks kill 13, injure 50 | DAWN.COM

East and South continues to simmer in Afghanistan

The Wikileaks reveal the location of trouble spots in Afghanistan. Compiled from the app. 72,000 cables is the breakdown of violence by region in Afghanistan. It turns out that Afghanistan’s South and East continue to be violent places where the number of militants (enemy) and civilians either killed in action (KIA) or wounded in action  (WIA) are much larger than the rest. Again, these are the parts of Afghanistan inhabited by the Pushtuns, who constitute the overwhelming majority of the Taliban resistance in Afghanistan.

Searchable Wikileaks, 76911 cables

The following interactive map is searchable. Zoom and click on the red dot to see details about the  incident.

Using statistics to understand armed conflict

Drew Conway, a doctoral student in New York, uses statistical analysis to make sense of armed conflicts. Pasted below is his graphic that he developed from analyzing Wikileaks data about Afghanistan in July 2010. He used R software to generate the graphic.

Data journalism at its best

Watch how journalists at Guardian used the data to paint a hitherto hidden picture of the Afghan war.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/datablog/interactive/2010/jul/26/ied-afghanistan-war-logs

Obama earning his Nobel peace prize

The American drones have struck numerous targets in Khyber Agency in Pakistan’s tribal areas killing 60 individuals. The reports are claiming all dead were militants. That may very well be true. However, like so many times in the past, one has to wait for the dust to settle to see if civilians were also caught in the fog of war, which has no way of finishing in a victory for either party.

The Obama administration has increased bombings from unmanned aircrafts in Pakistan, violating its sovereignty. The Wikileaks recently revealed that Pakistani military and the civilian government is very much in line with the American plans to bomb targets in tribal areas. Pakistani people on the other hand are not very sure about foreign military striking targets within Pakistan.

The graphic below from BBC reveals an increase in bombings by American planes within Pakistan during fall 2010. The militants as well as the American drones are busy attacking each other resulting in the deaths of Pakistani civilians. Notice the map where those killed in US bombings are in a different part of the tribal areas than those who are killed by the militants.

The graph on the left suggests a slow-down in attacks by the militants and the American pilot-less planes in July and August, owing to the deadly floods that inundated almost 15% of the land area in Pakistan.

I am wondering what would have been the shape and format of war had President Obama not been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

 

The number of attacks are presented below:

The Taliban controversy

The news media in North America and Europe has often criticized Pakistan for providing safe havens to the Taliban.  However, those who work on ground know it well that the problem lies at the other side of the Durand Line.

President Karzai does not enjoy much control over Afghanistan beyond his presidential compound in Kabul and therefore any assertion that the government in Kabul enjoys any control over what goes on in Afghanistan beyond a tiny patch of a few square kilometres is absurd.

The following article in the Boston Globe offers that unique perspective on what goes on along the Pakistan and Afghanistan border.

---------------

A different story emerges from Pakistan

H.D.S. Greenway / Oct 29, 2010

KHUR, Pakistan

WHAT CAN we do about Pakistan, you ask, the source of so many troubles for the United States? You wonder: Why can’t or won’t Pakistan eject the Taliban terrorists from their safe havens, or stop them from crossing the border to kill our boys in Afghanistan?

Let me be your guide. If you want to hear a different narrative, come with me for a visit into the so-called “lawless tribal territories’’ on the Northwest Frontier where Pakistan and Afghanistan meet. Here the trouble is that the Americans aren’t stopping the Taliban from crossing over from their safe havens in Afghanistan to attack Pakistan.

Come, you have been invited to lunch at the officers mess of the Bajaur Scouts, gleaming with the regimental silver and leftover traditions from the British who once tried, but never succeeded, in taming the Pashtun tribes. Semi-autonomous tribes traditionally rule themselves rather than be under the direct control of the government.

But first we must drive over the storied Malakand Pass, leaving behind, as Winston Churchill described it, “under the haze of heat’’ the flat lands, up where “the landscape is wild and rugged,’’ and down again into a broad valley like a cup.

“The country of the plains is left … A single step has led from peace to war … and we have we entered a strange land’’ he wrote a century ago, and it still holds true today. For then as now, Pashtun religious zealots, then called Ghazis and now called the Taliban, are making trouble in the tribal territories.

In 2008 they had just about taken over Bajaur on the Afghan border by killing elders, destroying schools, and imposing their strict brand of Islam. The 26th Regiment, and the Scouts, cleared, held, and now they are building. The casualties were heavier than most American units have suffered across the border in Kunar Province.

Unlike the regular army, the Scouts are all Pashtuns themselves. The British formed these frontier Scouts on the theory that it takes a Pashtun to catch a Pashtun. But the Scouts tell us that they had forgotten what their grandfathers and great grandfathers had known, and had to re-learn the guerrilla warfare of which the Taliban are masters.

Today Bajaur is all but pacified, at least for now. The markets are open, people can move freely, teachers are back in their schools. It’s a success story, and that’s why we have been invited here. Don’t be alarmed that we are escorted by pickups full of armed Scouts with machine guns mounted on the cabs. That’s just a precaution. You are not in danger, except, perhaps, “from suicidals,’’ the scouts say, or perhaps a roadside bomb.

Listen to the tribal “elders.’’ They once again represent tribal authority which the Taliban broke down. In town the Scouts have left one of the telephone poles which was refitted to be a gallows by the Taliban. You can see caves that the Taliban dug to hide in — “like the Viet Cong,’’ says one of the Scouts who has read about the tunnels of Cu Chi in Vietnam.

But come and look at this map. Those hatched marks are the bits where Taliban are still active, to be mopped up. There, straddling the border, there’s the weak point! The British drew the border separating members of the same tribe, so the tribesmen have always wandered back and forth at will.

No matter how successful the Scouts and the 26th Regiment have been in clearing out the Taliban from Bajaur, they say the Americans and the Afghan Army in Kunar Province aren’t preventing the Taliban from coming over from their safe havens in Afghanistan. It’s not for lack of will. It’s just the reality of porous borders and frontier fighting.

Whether Pakistan’s national leaders want to keep good relations with some Taliban in other parts of the frontier, as a hedge against when the Americans leave, is a matter above the Scouts’ pay grade. All they know is that Talibs from safe havens in Afghanistan are coming over to kill their boys.

Not quite what you’re hearing back home?

H.D.S. Greenway’s column appears regularly in the Globe.

Why does Canada's Globe and Mail not acknowledge the grim reality in Afghanistan?

Image via WikipediaAfghanistan is drowning in corruption, despair, and violence. The UN acknowledges it and so does the New York Times along with most others who are knowledgeable of the ground realities in Afghanistan. The Gobe and Mail in Canada continues to have a pro-war bias when it comes to Afghanistan.
The lead story out of Afghanistan is that of abysmal failure. Globe, on the other hand, publishes spot reports of the plans to clean the birth-place of the Taliban of Taliban. The op-ed pieces and the editorials have been notoriously pro-war in the past few years. Leading the charge have been the so called defense analysts, often based in western Canada, though some political science professors at McGill University with former stints at the Pentagon are exceptions, have been beating the war drums in a frenzy.
With months left before Canada leaves Afghanistan to Afghans, nothing short of a miracle will allow the Canadian government to claim victory. In fact, victory is no longer the word White House uses for Afghanistan. I, however, believe that there will be plenty of journalists and academics who would write the favorable op-ed pieces, based on their extensive and thorough few-weeks visits to Afghanistan, telling the Harper government what a great triumph has it been for Canada in Afghanistan.
As or Afghans, they may not want to look forward to decades of abject poverty, disease and violence, but as long as the foreigners (including Pakistan) keep muddling in Afghanistan, the situation in Afganistan is unlikely to improve.

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Fertility, longevity, mortality, prosperity, and Islam

Fewer babies per family means healthy babies, healthy mothers, longer lives and prosperity for all. If it sounds like a commercial for family planning, remember buchay do hi acchay (two kids are enough), than you’ve guessed it right. There is enough global evidence from the past four decades to advocate lowering fertility rates in low-income countries. 

Using data from the World Bank and animation technology provided by Google, I illustrate below that life expectancy at birth increases with the decline in fertility rates. Also, as the fertility rates drop, the health of the society improves as is evidenced by a decline in infant mortality rates. Furthermore, societies become more prosperous with the drop in fertility rates.

Let’s look at the animated graph below that demonstrates the evolution of four human development indicators from 1960 to 2008:

1. Fertility rate (total births per woman) plotted on the vertical axis,
2. life expectancy at birth in years, plotted on the horizontal axis,
3. infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births), demonstrated by the colour of circles representing countries,
4. and finally, gross national income per capita at purchasing power parity in current international dollars represented by the size of the circles.

Click on the play button located immediately below the graph to its left to view development indicators evolve from 1960 to 2008. I have, for comparison, highlighted Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia on the graph so that you can visually track their performance over time.

You can also pause the animation at any time, and can use the horizontal bar under the graph to move to a particular year to see the indicator values.  You can also point and click on the graph to determine values for each individual country at any point in time.

The animation reveals a dramatic decline in fertility rates starting in mid eighties for most countries, including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Iran, in fact experienced the fastest decline in fertility rates of the highlighted countries and ended with 1.8 births per woman in 2008. Bangladesh and India are also not far behind followed by Saudi Arabia.

So why is the fertility rate still very high in Pakistan? And can the sluggish socio-economic growth in Pakistan be explained by the abovementioned dependencies between high fertility and mortality rates, lower longevity, and less prosperity? At approximately four births per woman in 2008, the fertility rate in Pakistan is very high and is comparable to the one observed in very impoverished African states. As mentioned earlier, the fertility rates in Saudi Arabia and Iran, the two primary religious influences on Pakistan’s Sunni and Shiite schools of thought, have declined sharper than that of Pakistan.

A key obstacle to lowering fertility rate in Pakistan is the religious establishment, which has opposed any such move by the state. Convinced that the Creator has guaranteed sustenance of every living organism, which I wholeheartedly believe as well,  the semi-literate mullahs preach against the use of contraceptives and consider birth control sacrilegious since such practices in mullahs’ interpretation of the faith may question the Creator’s ability to provide for its creations.

But the Creator has also blessed human beings with intellect and wisdom that encourage one to live within one’s means. And how would one explain the much steeper decline in fertility rates in Bangladesh, which until 1973 was part of Pakistan. The fertility rate in 1974 in Bangladesh was 6.83 births per woman against 6.96 in Pakistan. By 2008, fertility rate in Bangladesh declined to 2.34 births per woman, a staggering 41% lower than that of Pakistan.

While mullahs in Pakistan have thwarted any attempt by the State to lower fertility rates, Saudi Arabia and Iran have lowered their fertility rates at much faster rates in the past three decades than Pakistan.  The average number of births per woman in Saudi Arabia declined from over seven children per woman in 1982 to just over three in 2008. In Iran, the same rate drop from 6.6 births per woman in 1982 to 1.8 births in 2008.

The reason for this dramatic decline in fertility rates in Iran and Saudi Arabia is the improved access to contraceptives for females in their childbearing age. So why the mullahs in Pakistan are not learning from their mentors in Iran and Saudi Arabia?

It is not just that the lower fertility rates are correlated with longevity, which is evidenced by a simultaneous increase in life expectancy, but lower fertility is also correlated with lower infant mortality. Fewer births per woman result in healthier infants and mothers, thus increasing the chance of infants to survive beyond the age of one. Higher birth rates deteriorate women’s health, especially with poor food quality, and thus lead to higher infant mortality.

If you look at the bottom right corner of the graph, you’ll see big blue circles representing rich European countries with lowest fertility and infant mortality rates, and the highest life expectancy at birth.

However, if you look at the upper left corner of the graph, you’ll see mostly poor African countries with high infant mortality rates, very low life expectancy at birth, and yes, high fertility rates.

At the very top left corner is Afghanistan. With the highest fertility rate at almost seven births per woman, Afghanistan also has the dubious distinction of having one of the highest infant mortality rates at 165 deaths per 1,000 live births, and lowest life expectancy of 44 years at birth. Years of war in Afghanistan has left it as the most impoverished country in the world.

While Afghanistan may not be able to turn its fortunes in the short run, it can at least focus on lowering its fertility rate. The Afghan mullahs are of the same ilk as the one in Pakistan, who vehemently oppose any family planning. However, the mullahs in Afghanistan and Pakistan need to be educated, and not in the western traditions, but about the transformation taking place in Saudi Arabia and Iran.  If the Iranian and Saudi mullahs can consent to, or live with, family planning, then mullahs in Afghanistan and Pakistan should also acknowledge the evidence presented in the animated graph above, i.e., lower fertility rate means lower infant mortality, higher life expectancy, and yes greater prosperity.

Fatalities in Afghanistan

The following data are available from icasualties.org.

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Chris Alexander misrepresents Afghanistan’s economic breakdown

Chris Alexander, Canada’s former ambassador in Afghanistan, paints a false picture of Afghanistan in the Globe and Mail on Saturday by suggesting that "Afghan society has recovered smartly since 2001." To bolster his point he mentions that despite the global recession, Afghanistan's GDP grew by 22%. This indeed is a gross misrepresentation of Afghanistan's economy and society, which have literally collapsed in the past decade.

The Afghan economic outlook could not be any more bleak. The World Bank in April 2010 has reported that 90% of the Afghanistan's budget was externally financed. Furthermore, during 2008/09 foreign aid accounted for 47% of Afghanistan's economy, making it the one of the most aid dependent country in the world.

The World bank also noted that 75% of the foreign aid bypasses the Karzai government's budget system, making the government less legitimate and relevant to the Afghans.

 

Mr. Alexander also suggests that Afghanistan’s inflation “has been minus 12 percent.” This again is not only false, but poorly stated. By all accounts, inflation in Afghanistan has hovered around 30%, which has subjected poor Afghans, who make up the majority of the population, to extreme financial hardships. The recent estimates of a lower inflation does not apply to cities, such as Kabul, where ordinary Afghans can no longer afford to pay rents for even modest accommodation.

By suggesting that Afghanistan's economy is rapidly growing (which is also not factual), Mr. Alexander is in fact concealing the fact that the country is becoming increasingly dependent on charity, and on billions in debt forgiveness from the IMF.

Such misrepresentation of facts is tantamount to intellectual dishonesty, to say the least.

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Floods kill over 400, displace another half a million in Pakistan

Torrential rains have killed 400 and displaced another half a million in Pakistan. A nation devastated by senseless violence, suicide attacks, indiscriminate bombings from American drones, and a collapsed economy is now facing another natural disaster.  The pictures below from BBC show that the victims of this national disaster is again the poorest in Pakistan.

Pakistani society and economy has been brought to the brink of disaster by the NATO’s demands to wage a war against its own people.  With hundreds of thousands of troops engaged in the American war against terror on the western borders, and another few thousands stationed along the Indian border, the military and civilian establishment in Pakistan does not have the capacity to cope with even mild disasters, let alone a major flood, which is wreaking havoc in northern Pakistan.

A man trying to save minors from the flood

A child trying to salvage what is left of his home

Men trying to flee the flood-stricken areas. What happened to the women and children?

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Shiites continue to be murdered in Pakistan

The Sunni extremists in Pakistan’s tribal areas have yet again murdered 18 more Shiites in cold blood. The state in Pakistan has become a silent spectator in this game of death where the militant Sunnis, who once were backed by the Pakistani State and still enjoy the blessing of numerous state institutions, continue to kill Shiites and other religious minorities in Pakistan with impunity.

The latest violence has killed 18 Shiites from Kurram Agency in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Hundreds if not thousands of Shiite residents of Kurram Agency have been killed the Sunni extremists since the mid seventies when the American and Saudi-funded Arab and Afghans launched a civil war in Afghanistan.

More from BBC below.

Militants kill 16 in Pakistan convoy ambush

A suspected sectarian attack on a civilian convoy in a troubled tribal area of Pakistan has left 16 dead.

Several other people were wounded in the ambush in the north west, where the army has carried out operations against Islamist militants.

The convoy, which was being escorted by security forces, was attacked in Char Khel village in the Kurram region.

All those killed were Shia Muslims, according to local officials, who said the death toll may rise.

The convoy was heading from Parachinar, in Kurram, to the main regional city of Peshawar when it was ambushed on Saturday in the predominantly Sunni region.

The Kurram tribal district has been a flashpoint for violence between the minority Shias and the Sunni community for several years.

Some reports put the number of dead at 18, including two women.

Jamshed Tori, who was wounded in the attack, told the Reuters news agency: "Militants attacked the last two vehicles in the convoy with automatic weapons near Char Khel village, killing 18 people."

A tribal leader, Mussrat Bangash, also confirmed the deaths.

Kurram has been hit by scores of attacks, including robberies and kidnappings for ransom, in the past three years.

The army has reportedly killed nearly 100 militants in operations in the region, close to the Afghan border, in recent months.

Several major suicide attacks have hit Pakistan in recent weeks. An attack on Thursday killed at least five people in the Swat Valley, also in north west.

Earlier this month, a pair of suicide bombers blew themselves up in the Mohmand tribal region, killing more than 100 people.

The Pakistani government is under US pressure to crack down on the unrest in the border region.

The Shia minority accounts for some 20% of Pakistan's population of 160 million.

More than 4,000 people have died as a result of sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shias since the late 1980s.

Can computerized analysis help find Osama Bin Laden?

Professors Gillespie et al. while writing in MIT International Review have not only identified Parachinar, the town where Osama Bin Laden may have been hiding, but they have also pinpointed the three buildings that they think are likely to be Bin Laden's hideout. Since I am from the Northwest Frontier Province, I find it a little odd that Osama may be hiding in the only Shiite majority town in the entire tribal region of Pakistan.

The link to the said paper is copied at the end of this message.

The geography professors at UCLA may have used spatial analysis to determine the probable hideout of Osama; they certainly overlooked history and anthropology, which would have explained the gory sectarian rivalries between the Shiites of Parachinar and the Sunni supporters of Osama bin Laden. This is yet another example of technical analysis devoid of any understanding of the local socio-cultural and political contexts.

Parachinar is a small town of approximately 20,000 individuals, who are almost exclusively Shiites and belong to Turi and Bangash tribes. The Sunni tribesmen from North Waziristan agency along with other militants from Arab countries and the Caucasus have been attacking the Shiites over the past two years, which has resulted in the death of hundreds of Shiites. In addition, since the Sunni tribesmen control the ground access to Parachinar from Peshawar, the supply of food, medicines, and other necessities to Parachinar have been interrupted for months, forcing the doctors to operate without anesthesia. The power and water supply, which have been restored only recently, also remained suspended.

I find it hard to believe that after having hundreds, if not thousands, of Shiites murdered by the followers of Osama bin Laden, the Shiites of Parachinar would like to aid and abet Osama bin Laden.

It is sad to see that the press in North America has largely ignored this tragedy that has been unfolding in Parachinar over the past two years. It took faculty and students from UCLA to put Parachinar on the map, but only for the wrong reasons.

Professors Gillespie et al. assert that "One of the most important political questions of our time is: Where is Osama Bin Laden?" Even when the crisis in Darfur has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians; the relentless bombing by American drones and the fighting in the Pakistan’s tribal areas has forced half a million civilians to live in deplorable conditions in refugee camps; and the hunger and disease faced daily by the global poor, the authors still believe that locating Osama is “one of the most important political questions of our time.” Even if Osama Bin Laden is found, what answers could he possibly provide that would make the world become a better place?

Lastly, I am concerned that if the UCLA professors are taken seriously by the trigger-happy NATO forces, who certainly lack ground intelligence in the tribal areas and cannot tell friend from foe, the Shiites of Parachinar may have to fend off bombs dropped from American drones, while they are fighting for their survival against the Taleban on the ground.

Gillespie et al. Finding Osama Bin Laden: An application of biogeographic theories and satellite imagery. MIT International Review. Feb 17, 2009. (http://web.mit.edu/mitir/2009/online/finding-bin-laden.pdf)