Asia

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – In a sign of China’s increasingly powerful role in Central Asia and the Middle East, on Tuesday a Chinese train arrived in Tehran after a 14-day journey. The freight train just used existing rail links to go from China to Kazakhstan, then to Uzbekistan, then Turkmenistan, […]

Afghanistan

Iran Dragooning Thousands of Undocumented Afghans as Cannon Fodder in Syria

contributors

Human Rights Watch | – – (New York) – Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has recruited thousands of undocumented Afghans living there to fight in Syria since at least November 2013, Human Rights Watch said today, and a few have reported that Iranian authorities coerced them. Iran has urged the Afghans to defend Shia sacred […]

Afghanistan

A Teacher in Afghanistan: Is the Future Democracy or Muslim Extremism?

contributors

By Jeffrey E. Stern | (Informed Comment) | – – A few months ago, in downtown Kabul, a small man stood on top of a car with a megaphone in a city liberated by American troops, and faced down his government. His quarrel was with President Ashraf Ghani. Tensions rose, a guard fired on the […]

China

Dragon & Phoenix: Khamenei Lauds New Sino-Iranian ‘Strategic Partnership’

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Iran’s clerical leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, spoke Saturday on the occasion of the state visit to Iran of Chinese President Xi Jinping. He said, “The government and people of Iran have always looked and are still looking for expanding relations with independent and trustworthy countries like […]

Afghanistan

6 US Troops killed by Taliban Suicide Bomber in Afghanistan

Juan Cole

Curated by Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – BBC Monitoring translates from Pushtu a report from the ‘Afghan Islamic Press’ from Kabul on 21 Dec., which says that “A suicide attack has been carried out on the Afghan and foreign forces in Bagram District of Parwan Province, in which . . . foreign […]

Education

Pakistan’s New Weapon Against Taliban Is Education

contributors

AJ+ | (Video News Report) | – – “One year after 132 kids were killed in a school attack, Pakistan’s army has found another way to fight the Taliban. ” Pakistan’s New Weapon Against Taliban Is Education

Central Asia

Can Muslim Fundamentalism be Criminalized? Militant Secularism in Central Asia

contributors

By Farangis Najibullah and Charles Recknagel | ( RFE/RL) | – – Nabijon spends nearly 10 hours a day inside his one-room barbershop on a dusty backstreet in Khujand, Tajikistan’s second-largest city. He has no shortage of customers. “Business has never been this good,” says the third-generation barber, who politely declines to give his full […]

China

Dragon v. Eagle: China & the US compete for Eurasia

contributors

By Pepe Escobar | ( Tomdispatch.com ) – – The U.S. is transfixed by its multibillion-dollar electoral circus. The European Union is paralyzed by austerity, fear of refugees, and now all-out jihad in the streets of Paris. So the West might be excused if it’s barely caught the echoes of a Chinese version of Roy […]

Afghanistan

Afghanistan: America’s Military Money Pit

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt | (Informed Comment) | – – Let’s begin with the $12 billion in shrink-wrapped $100 bills, Iraqi oil money held in the U.S. The Bush administration began flying it into Baghdad on C-130s soon after U.S. troops entered that city in April 2003. Essentially dumped into the void that had once been […]