140,000 Turkish Troops Mass at Iraq Border Iraq Benchmarks still Waiting for Godot Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari (a Kurd) warned Monday that 140,000 Turkish troops were massed at the border with Iraq. Ankara accuses Iraqi Kurdistan of giving safe harbor to PKK terrorists who are blowing up soldiers and others in Turkey’s eastern Anatolia. […]
Informed Comment Global Affairs Our New
Informed Comment: Global Affairs Our new group blog, Informed Comment: Global Affairs has gotten favorable notice in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Speaking of which, contributors have made some very important entries in the past couple of days. Barnett Rubin, among the world’s foremost experts on Afghanistan explains why he is a “pessoptimist” on the […]
Physicians Of Fear My Column At Salon
Physicians of Fear My column at Salon.com this week is “Inside the minds of killer doctors”: Some of the accused behind the recent terror plots in Britain were professional healers. What on earth prompts someone to snap from caregiver to killer? Excerpt: “the actions of the group in Britain were too erratic and error-prone to […]
Al Qaeda In Iraq Threatens Iran
“Al-Qaeda” in Iraq Threatens Iran Thousands of Sadrists Demonstrate against al-Maliki The “Islamic State in Iraq” led by Abu Umar al-Bagdadi, has theatened to target Iran unless it ceases its support for Shiite groups in Iraq. Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, a right hand man of Saddam who still leads a major Baathist cell in the north, […]
Al Maliki To Face No Confidence Vote As
Al-Maliki to Face No-Confidence Vote? As Many as 150 Dead in “Turkmen Massacre” Readers sometimes ask me if analyzing the news from Iraq every day doesn’t get me down. It got me down today. Sunni Arab guerrillas, unable to operate as effectively in Baghdad because of the US troop surge, had a suicide bomber drive […]
Pakistan Mosque Tensions Rise
Musharraf Warns Militants of Death See Manan Ahmed’s excellent analysis of the crisis in Pakistan at our group blog. He points out that the militant Red Mosque was an ally of the United States and the Pakistani government in the 1980s, when they were fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. On Saturday and early Sunday, Pakistan’s […]
Pakistani Army Moves In Takes Faridia
Pakistani Army Moves in Takes Faridia Seminary Standoff at Red Mosque Pakistani troops took the Faridia Seminary attached to the Red Mosque on Friday. On Saturday morning, the army continued to move in on the mosque itself, amid sounds of explosions. The clerical leader there, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, has been talking about fighting to the […]
Car Bomb Kills 22 Clashes In Samawah
Car Bomb Kills 22 Clashes in Samawah Parliament vote on Oil Bill Murky Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that parliament is scheduled to debate the draft petroleum bill on Saturday. It says that the Sadr Movement, loyal to fundamentalist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, is rumored to be ending its boycott of parliament. The absence of those […]
Shiite Wedding Bombed Sadrists Reject
Domenici Calls for Change of Course Shiite Wedding bombed Sadrists Reject Oil Law Republican Senator Pete Domenici has joined the small but expanding ranks of Republicans in Congress who are demanding a change of course in the Iraq War, having lost faith in the surge. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has called for Iraqi security forces […]
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