Juan Cole

The USG Open Source Center transcribes the call by the number two man in al-Qaeda for the Pakistani public to support the Pakistani Taliban. (They mostly don’t.) It was in English because educated Pakistanis know that language.: Al-Zawahiri Calls for Supporting Jihad in PakistanJihadist Websites — OSC SummaryWednesday, July 15, 2009 Document Type: OSC Summary […]

The tactic of congressional conservatives, of portraying Sonia Sotomayor as a reverse racist for her ‘wise Latina’ comment, has so many holes in it that you could make a Swiss cheese sandwich with it. First of all, her statement about the wisdom gained by members of oppressed and discriminated-against groups didn’t have anything to do […]

Signs are appearing in Europe that the Israeli hawks are finding it more difficult to operate with impunity. Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli military attack on virtually defenseless Gaza last winter appears to have wrought significant damage on Israel’s image and standing, and opened it to punitive measures and even boycotts in Europe, unlike previous […]

Former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani will deliver a Friday prayers address in Tehran this week. A behind the scenes backer of the opposition candidate for president Mir Hosain Mousavi, Rafsanjani has kept a low profile since his candidate was declared a loser in the June 12 election. Mousavi and the other reformist candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, […]

It turns out that the secret CIA program that Leon Panetta cancelled, and which former VP Richard Bruce Cheney ordered hidden from Congress, was in fact an assassination squad focusing on al-Qaeda figures. The problem with assassination teams is that they are extra-judicial. They are killing people who have not been proven to have done […]

Jonathan Lyons writes in a guest editorial for IC: The Western world knows the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as a political radical, the militant revolutionary who overthrew the U.S.-backed shah in 1979 and established an Islamic state shortly thereafter. But it is as a religious radical that Khomeini should go down in history, for he […]

Update: Guerrillas set off bombs outside churches in Baghdad on Sunday, wounding 7 persons. Attacks on Christians are a hallmark of the extremist Salafi groups in Sunnism. About half of Iraq’s indigenous Christian community has fled the country since 2003, and there now may be as few as 400,000 left. Late reports put the number […]

I can tell by various web metrics that you guys are not interested in the Afghanistan story. You should be and I am going to parse it today anyway. It is one of the advantages of being non-profit that I write what I want and you can read it or not as you like. But […]

The USG Open Source Center translates or paraphrases articles in the Afghan press during June on that country’s economy. I take away the impression that very little has been done to improve Kabul, that 45 percent of the capital’s residents lack electricity, and that 99 percent of people in Nuristan are below the poverty line. […]