Manan Ahmed at our Global Affairs Blog points out that Karachi has now joined New York, Madrid and London as a site of a major terrorist attack. Late reports say 136 are dead and over 500 wounded in a bombing aimed at assassinating former prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto on her return after years […]
Archives for October 2007
Turkish Parliament Authorizes Iraq Incursion Blackwater Leaving Iraq
The Turkish parliament authorized a Turkish incursion into Iraq in pursuit of guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). Syria threw its support behind Turkey on this issue. Syria has 2 million Kurds of its own, in a population of 19 million [plus 1.4 million Iraqi refugees]. Bashar al-Asad fears Kurdish nationalism as a threat […]
Putin & Ahmadinejad Pledge Cooperation
Farideh Farhi weighs in on the significance of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Iran, and the frustrations his olive branch to Tehran produced in Bush (who went a little crazy, talking about World War III if Iran gained the knowledge of how to produce a nuclear weapon.) The USG Open Source Center translates from […]
Cole in Salon: "The Iran Hawks"
My column in Salon.com, “The War Hawks,” is now online. Excerpt: ‘ Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton think a tough line on Tehran will sell politically. They could be right. Future historians may conclude that the key issue in the 2008 presidential campaign was not Iraq, but whether the United States should go to war […]
Oil Peak or Peak Oil?
The tensions between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan contributed to jitteriness in the oil markets that drove the prices to as high as $88.20 at one point on Tuesday before falling back to over $87. The oil price spike in turn frightened investors and hit stock markets around the world. The United States consumes about 21 […]
Guest Op-Ed: PKK Terrorism Undermines US Policy in Middle East
An informed observer writes anonymously: ‘“With our understanding of the worries of the Turkish friends, we are ready to undertake urgent negotiations with senior Turkish officials to discuss all points of disagreement,” he said. (NYT) The Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Authority (KRG) is not a party to the “negotiations” because they are not a state Turkey […]
Iran and Afghanistan
At the Global Affairs blog, Farideh Farhi weighs in on Iranian human rights activist Emadeddin Baghi. She suggests that “it also suggests a shift of approach by Ahmadinejad’s paranoid government from the harassment of well-known human rights activists to their arrest.” Barnett Rubin weighs in on reports of the Afghanistan government negotiating with the Taliban. […]
Polish Base Attacked by Shiites Harthiya Bombing in Baghdad kills 4, wounds 25
Shiite militiamen rained mortar shells on the Polish base at Diwaniya on Monday, and the fighting that thus broke out left 4 civilians, 3 gunmen, and at least 5 Iraqi children dead, along with 28 wounded. 15 houses were also partially destroyed in the fighting. The Polish ambassador was targeted, recently, as well. The recent […]
Close: Israeli Intelligence behind Syria Strike not Persuasive
The NYT has been pushing the story that the Israeli air strike on Syria on September 6 came in response to intelligence that Syria was building a nuclear reactor at the site with clandestine North Korean help. There are reasons to question the accuracy of the Israeli story, which at some points has included allegations […]
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