Archives for May 2009

My appearance on Monday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. at an event of the Muslim Public Affairs Council in connection with the book launch of my newest, Engaging the Muslim World is now online. Many thanks to MPAC Executive Director Salam Marayati, with whom it was an honor to share the podium. […]

Reuters suggests that one of the outcomes of Wednesday’s summit between Obama, Zardari and Karzai might be a US push for a national unity government in Pakistan, uniting the Pakistan People’s Party with the Muslim League-N of Nawaz Sharif. The Pakistani newspaper Dawn does not rule out the possibility, though the obstacles are severe. It […]

Guerrillas detonated a parked truck bomb at a market in mostly Sunni Arab Dora on Wednesday morning, killing 15 and wounding 50. A big truck appears to have pulled up beside the one rigged with the bomb, shielding many in the crowd at the farmer’s market (most of the stalls were occupied by Shiite farmers), […]

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai’s visit to Washington, DC was overshadowed by a controversy over another US airstrike gone astray in Farah Province south of Herat, which left at least 30 civilians dead, (and some say over 100). Angry villagers from Bala Baluk brought truckloads of bodies, most of them women and children, to Farah’s provincial […]

As Pakistani president Asaf Ali Zardari arrived in Washington for talks with President Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, fighting intensified in Pakistan’s northwest. On Tuesday morning, Pakistani Taliban deployed a suicide bomber to attack Pakistani security forces near Peshawar killing 5 and wounding 9 persons, among them school children bystanders. WaPo says that fighting […]

As President Obama prepares for Wednesday’s tripartite summit between himself, the president of Pakistan (Asaf Ali Zardari) and the president of Afghanistan (Hamid Karzai), he has just gotten some bad news on the Afghan political front. The Obama administration had clearly hoped to see Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai unseated in the August presidential elections. They […]

Thanks to Sam Oglesby for a searching review of my new book “Engaging the Muslim World. Excerpt: “Turning to the most troublesome current foreign policy dilemma, Mr. Cole feels that U.S. policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan is mistaken. Most of the billions in foreign aid have benefited the military and the elites and not the […]

Thomas Strouse writes in a guest op-ed for IC: Two critical elections will take place in early June that could potentially shape the direction that the Middle East region moves in the near future. Parliamentary elections will be held in Lebanon on June 7 and a presidential election will be held in Iran on June […]

The LAT reports that Iraqi soldiers at a base near Mosul shot and killed two US troops on Saturday and wounded a third. The US soldiers returned fire, killing one of the Iraqis. The LAT says there are increasing fears that Sunni insurgents have infiltrated the security forces. Iranian helicopter gunships attacked villages in Iraqi […]