After having celebrated New Year’s Eve in style for the first time since 2002, Baghdad awoke on the first of the year to bad news. In a signature tactic of the Salafi Jihadis in Iraq, a suicide bomber detonated his payload at a Shiite commemoration for the departed in Zayouna, a mixed neighborhood of east […]
Pakistan Elections Postponed; PPP Threatens Street Protests; OSC: Al-Qaeda has not Claimed Bhutto Killing
Pakistan’s electoral commission announced Tuesday that the elections scheduled for January 8 will be postponed until February. The Pakistan People’s Party objected strenuously to the delay, and threatened to take to the streets with popular protests. Meanwhile, the caretaker government is furiously backtracking on its earlier claims that Benazir Bhutto died of a concussion. The […]
How Fleeting is Empire
The Maps of War site has a review of Middle Eastern empires beginning about 1800 BC. I’d have added a couple of phases at the end, including the Cold War divisions of states by their alliances with the US and the Soviet Union, and then the new US empire in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus bases […]
Musharraf’s Watergate? Physicians Coerced by Military; Nawaz: Musharraf Must Go
It looks increasingly as though someone in the military government in Pakistan may have been somehow complicit in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. An attorney for the physicians who put out the story that Ms. Bhutto died of a concussion went to CNN on Monday and said that his clients were pressured by the military. […]
Turkey and Indonesia Muslim Success Stories Economic Upturn in Egypt
Here are some trends that I hope continue and deepen in 2008. Turkey and Indonesia are making strides as secular democracies in Muslim-majority countries, with impressive political participation on the part of the public, with elections that produce surprises for the powers that be, and with steady economic growth. The striking thing about both of […]
Zogby: Slight Surge for Edwards, McCain; Giuliani Slips
New Zogby Poll (reprinted by permission) confirms Edwards surge in Iowa but disconfirms Romney lead or Huckabee decline. ‘UTICA, New York—The race for the Democratic presidential nomination tightened slightly over the last 24 hours, but Senator Hillary Clinton retained her edge over rivals Barack Obama and John Edwards, a new Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby daily tracking poll in […]
Guest Op-Ed: US Foreign Policy; the Principle of Non-Intervention
A seasoned observer writes: ‘ The complexity, interrelationships, results and consequences (intended and unintended) of US Iraq policy – one of the seven foreign interventions by the Bush Administration – were on confused display this week. While the sequence was to have been Iran sanctions followed by the Iraq matter, because of manipulations by the […]
Top 10 Challenges Facing the US in the Middle East, 2008
10. Helping broker a deal in Lebanon between the March 14 Movement and the Shiites so that a new president can be elected and a national unity government can be formed. Lebanon’s economy was badly damaged by the Israeli war on the poor little country in summer of 2006. Tourism is a big part of […]
McClatchy: Edwards, Romney Lead in Iowa
McClatchy has a new Iowa poll out, taken Dec. 26-28. It shows that there was no spike among Iowa voters in concern for international affairs or terrorism in the wake of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. The poll shows that Mitt Romney has a significant lead, 27% to 23% for former Arkansas governor […]
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