Archives for September 2009

Preliminary reports are saying that a NATO airstrike on an oil tanker earlier hijacked by guerrillas set off an enormous explosion as people had gathered around it. Some 60 are feared dead. There has been a central and continuing debate about how the Taliban and other anti-government guerrilla groups in Afghanistan have been funded. Initially […]

Philip McCrum writes in an guest Op-Ed for IC: The Huthi rebellion kicked off in 2004, when Hussein Badr al-Din al-Huthi proclaimed himself “Amir al-mu’minin” (Prince of the Believers), denounced the Yemeni republic and declared that Yemen was reverting to a Shia imamate, with himself as its spiritual leader—in effect pronouncing himself to be the […]

A Taliban suicide bomber killed the deputy director of Afghanistan intelligence along with 21 other people in the eastern Laghman province. This sort of successful strike at a high government official suggests an inside job, with foreknowledge of the official’s itinerary. It makes you wonder how many figures in the government of Hamid Karzai are […]

Nayereh Tohidi writes in a guest op-ed for IC: Iranian Women figured prominently in the 10th presidential elections of June 2009, in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner by a wide margin. In large pre-election rallies and intense campaigns and during the post-election upheaval women played a visible and active role. Several internal conflicts […]

Bill Maher interviews Bill Moyerson Afghanistan: Maher interviews Moyers on health care: End/ (Not Continued)

One of the major headlines out of Iraq today is the release of non-insurgent casualty figures for August, which are 456, as Agence France Presse reports. This was the highest monthly toll since July of 2008. I commend AFP on how it reported this story. Unlike a lot of other pieces, this one does not […]

Michael Penn writes in a guest op-ed for IC: The thumping victory of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in the Japanese general elections is going to have a strong influence on the future of Japan’s relations with the Islamic world. The DPJ has pledged to make the US-Japan alliance an “equal partnership,” by which […]

I have some basic questions about the “take, clear and hold” strategy that seems to be recommended in Afghanistan by Gen. Stan McChrystal, and which is modeled on the alleged lessons of Iraq. The Sunni Arabs of Iraq, who produced most of the insurgency against the US presence and the rise of a new Shiite […]