From the New York Times, July 4: WASHINGTON, July 3 — The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, intelligence officials confirmed Monday. The… Read moreCIA closes bin Laden unit
A taped message purported to be from fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar was broadcast on Geo TV, a commercial station in Pakistan June 25. The voice on the tape issued a challenge to the Afghan government and foreign troops fighting… Read moreMullah Omar speaks —again
Remember all those wacky conspiracy theorists who said that “liberating” Afghanistan from the Taliban was really about building an oil pipeline through the country? From India’s Rediff.com, May 19: India joins Afghanistan gas pipeline project The Cabinet on Thursday approved… Read moreAfghanistan pipeline project advances
From The Jurist, May 8: Afghan parliament descends into chaos as lawmakers attack female legislator The floor of the Afghan parliament has witnessed its first outbreak of violence, with lawmakers physically and verbally assaulting a controversial female legislator who called… Read moreAfghanistan: woman legislator physically attacked on parliament floor
From AP, March 22: KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Authorities launched a probe today into the killings by Afghan security forces of at least 15 people, who an Afghan army commander claimed were Taliban rebels but locals said were tribesmen wanting to… Read moreAfghanistan: threats, violence meet Nowruz
A March 13 report from Pakistan’s Daily Times on the army-occupied town of Miranshah in North Waziristan: PESHAWAR: Authorities in Miranshah further eased an eight-day-old curfew on Sunday after soldiers killed dozens of militants in an operation last week. The… Read morePakistan: army occupies Waziristan villages
As a war of words breaks out between Hamid Karzai and Pervez Musharraf over accusations of Afghan insurgents using Pakistani territory as a staging ground, Islamabad broaches actually fencing off the border the way Pat Buchanan wants to fence off… Read morePakistan threatens to fence off Afghan border
Great, just what we need—military incursions to provoke a general uprising in Pakistan’s increasingly restive Tribal Areas. Just to give the teetering edifice of Musharraf’s dictatorship a healthy shove towards the abyss. Then we can have a nuclear-armed Taliban in… Read moreWar in Waziristan?
This brief analysis of the challenges facing the expanded NATO mandate in Afghanistan sheds light on the real politics of the “cartoon jihad”—obviously, the Danish cartoons have been seized upon as a symbol and crystalization of a much wider set… Read moreAfghanistan: violence inaugurates NATO expansion
“Death to Denmark!” Does it get any more surreal than this? From the foreign press on the escalating anti-cartoon protests: Police clobbered stone-throwing protesters with batons and fired tear gas in the Pakistanian city of Peshawar on Wednesday – Pakistan’s… Read more“Cartoon jihad” escalates
From AP, Feb. 9: A suicide bomber struck Thursday in Pakistan on the holiest festival for Shiite Muslims, triggering a riot that left a provincial town in flames and at least 27 people dead and more than 50 wounded. After… Read moreAshura violence in Pakistan, Afghanistan
A round-up on the Feb. 7 BBC shows how the crisis over the anti-Islam cartoons published in Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten (and since reprinted in Norway and other European countries) is spinning out of control. The protests sweeping the Muslim world have… Read morePropaganda and the cartoon controversy
