Sonora state police killed 15 in a fierce gunbattle just south of the Arizona border May 16 after tracking into the hills a group of heavily-armed gunmen who earlier that day killed five municipal police in Cananea. Three Cananea residents… Read moreMexican drug gangs escalate war on security forces; torture in Michoacán
Two years ago, following rumors that Osama bin Laden had taken refuge in Nuristan, we warned that the remote mountain region immortalized as “Kafiristan” in Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King would be drawn into Afghanistan’s war. Now,… Read moreAfghanistan: war comes to Kipling’s “Kafiristan”
The US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has brought in trainers from Colombia to prepare a new Afghan anti-narcotics force. Opium cultivation has steadily grown in Afghanistan since the US invasion of 2001, leaping from 183,000 acres in 2002 to 408,000… Read moreAfghanistan: opium booming
From the Zochrot (Remembering), a group of Israeli citizens working to raise awareness of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948: International Nakba Day, May 15, 2007 The Nakba is the story of the Palestinian tragedy: the destruction of communities,… Read moreStatement on the Nakba and Right of Return
An interesting report from IraqSlogger, May 15: An unknown left-wing group calling itself the Iraqi Armed Revolutionary Resistance distributed leaflets in the Mid-Euphrates area around Najaf, Hilla and Karbala calling for “resistance against American, British and Zionist occupiers in order… Read moreMarxist insurgents emerge in Iraq?
A Pakistani man held at Guantanamo Bay denied belonging to al-Qaeda and accused US authorities of torturing him, according to a document released by the Pentagon May 15. Majid Khan, who lived in the US for several years, was arrested… Read moreGitmo hearings reveal torture claim
With all the paranoia about al-Qaeda and ETA, it seems the latest bomb scare in Spain may be the work of radical urban preservationists. Police say they deactivated an explosive device May 15 found outside an industrial warehouse in Lugo,… Read moreSpain: preservationist terror in Galicia?
A statement by supposed al-Qaeda affiliate in Europe, the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, pledged to launch attacks in Paris in response to the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as president. “As you have chosen the crusader and Zionist Sarkozy as a… Read moreFrance in al-Qaeda crosshairs?
Algerian troops killed 13 Islamist fighters east of Algiers May 14, local media reported. Special forces backed by helicopters killed 11 militants said to belong to the “al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb” in an offensive on rebel hideouts in… Read moreAlgeria: more clashes with al-Qaeda
An African Union convoy was struck by a road-side bomb in the Somali capital of Mogadishu [May 16], killing an unknown number of Ugandan peacekeepers. [AlJazeera, May 16] A pair of aid workers—a Kenyan and a Briton—remain in the custody… Read moreSomalia: resistance, piracy continue
From the Times of India, May 16: NEW DELHI — The government on Tuesday informed Parliament that naxalites were working in close coordination with some terrorist outfits operating in J&K and were also in touch with the Liberation Tigers of… Read moreIndia: Naxalite-Tamil Tiger convergence?
Turkey’s Supreme Court May 16 overturned a 40-year prison term imposed on two paramilitary officers for overseeing the bombing of a bookstore in the eastern town of Semdinli two years ago. The blast, which killed one person, sparked angry protests… Read moreTurkey: impunity for anti-Kurdish paramilitaries?
