Juan Cole

From a discussion of so-called Koranic “belligerancy” in the Medinan chapters In general, theological explanations by themselves do little to explain foreign policy, while foreign policy debates tend to distort the meaning and history of theology. In Islam, the difference between the Medina chapters of the Koran (c. 622-632 A.D.) and the Meccan chapters of […]

A letter by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s right-hand man, has been published by Asharq al-Awsat. Dated February 1998, the letter speaks of Americans as “the foreign investors” who “must be hit.” The term “investor” is part of a code in the letter, where everything is referred to as a “company” and an economic transaction. This […]

In response to a question raised about the request Paul Wolfowitz made to put 100,000 US troops into eastern Turkey on the Iraq border, and whether there was a prospect of Turkish troops going into Iraq in case a war broke out: The whole point of asking permission to put US troops into Turkey on […]

A number of Iraqi expatriate groups will boycott the forthcoming dissident summit in London, according to Asharq al-Awsat. Al-Hizb al-Islami al-Iraqi, a Sunni Islamist party, complains that Sunni representation at the summit is weak. He says that two-thirds of the delegates are Shiites. (He does not say that about 2/3s of Iraqis are Shiites; that […]

Al-Qaeda has launched a campaign against Usama Rushdi, a former publicist in Holland for the Islamic Grouping (al-Gamaa al-Islamiyyah), he says. The Islamic Grouping was implicated in the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar el Sadat in 1981, and in the 1990s launched a series of terrorist attacks and challenges to the Egyptian government. Rushdi gained […]

The trial of suspected al-Qaeda member Mounir El Motassadeq for having been part of the Hamburg cell that planned and carried out September 11, now being held in Germany, may be transferred to the United States. This move is contemplated because it would allow prosecutors to call to the stand Ahmad Ressam, now in Federal […]

A summit has been set up between Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan for the initialling of a deal to build a $3.2 bn. pipeline from Turkmenistan down to South Asia. It is scheduled for Dec. 26-27 in the Turkmenistan capital of Ashkabad (Ashgebot). The pipeline would stretch from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Gwadar, and will be […]

     The more the Kuwaiti government thinks about it the less it likes the speech Saddam Hussein gave the day before yesterday. All though it appeared to contain an grudging apology for the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, it also contained lots of other, more sinister language.      The Kuwaiti officials now read it as a series […]

     Stinger shoulder-launched missiles are being sold in the bazaars of Kabul for $200,000 according to foreign observers in that city. The geniuses in the Reagan administration (who we now have with us at the top of the government, like Paul Wolfowitz) gave Islamic extremists about 400 stingers in the 1980s to use against Soviet helicopter […]