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Successes and Failures of the War on Terror Juan R. I. Cole Symposium on “Globalization and Terrorism” International Institute, University of Michigan September 11, 2002 On September 11, the al-Qaida terrorist network struck an epochal blow against the United States. It aimed at pushing the U.S. out of the Middle East as a status quo […]

One of the founders of Algeria’s “Armed Islamic Group” revealed in an interview with Asharq al-Awsat that Usama Bin Laden gave monetary aid to the Algerian fundamentalists beginning in 1992. That was when the military government threw out the election results, in which the Islamic Salvation Front had won a majority in parliament and repressed […]

The rebellion of Padshah Khan Zadran in Eastern Afghanistan appears to have failed for the moment. The disaffected warlord, who has vowed to overthrow Karzai, had rockets fired into the middle of Khost. He was trying to take the city from Governor Muhammad Hakim Tanival, Karzai’s appointee. Tanival’s forces have fought off the challenge. But […]

Bin Laden Preaches against U.S. Asim Daraz, an Egyptian journalist who lived in Afghanistan and associated for a while with Usama Bin Laden, showed videotape excerpts in London yesterday that help explain Bin Laden’s hatred for the U.S., according to ash-Sharq al-Awsat. One was a sermon Bin Laden delivered in Jidda at his family’s mosque […]

Instability in Afghanistan The ability of terrorist forces (whether al-Qaida or Gulbuddin Hekmatyar) to set off a huge car bomb explosion in Kabul, killing at least 30 and injuring 50, on the same day that President Hamid Karzai narrowly escaped being assassinated in Kandahar, demonstrates how much remains to be done there. U.S. preoccupation with […]

Iraqi Shi`ites and Hizbullah There seems to me to be a contradiction between the stated plans of the hawks in the Bush administration to establish a post-Saddam democracy in Iraq on the one hand, and other goals of the administration on the other. For instance, President Bush put Iran in the “axis of evil” and […]

More on Sawa and Gutting the Voice of America I’ve been listening to Radio Sawa, and the situation is even worse than I thought. It is available at: http://www.ibb.gov/radiosawa/index.html First of all, they play the Backstreet Boys. Even worse, the news breaks, at least on the Web service, appear to be much shorter and less […]

al-Qaeda in Holland Dutch prosecutors in Rotterdam said on Monday that they had arrested 8 persons who belong to a radical Islamic group that provided “logistical, material and financial support” to al-Qaeda, and recruited fighters for it. This cell is apparently unrelated to a previously apprehended group of 4 men. The previously arrested cell included […]